PEFC Certification

PEFC emphasizes an approach which encourages local or national certification systems be developed independently and come together in PEFC.

The forest ecosystem is high complex, and evolves constantly. Forest in every country or geographic distribution is influenced by various factors. Hence, each region would require a different and a unique sustainable forest management plan or strategy.

PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) emphasizes on the following approach:

• Encourages local or national certification systems to be developed independently.
• These local or national certification system could come together in PEFC.
• To be a part of PEFC, companies are required to prove compliance with the PEFC’s Sustainability Benchmarks, principles, guidelines and criteria.

PEFC encourages local stakeholders in decision making and standard setting, before it is endorsed. The PEFC and FSC criteria though are derived from the basic principal of sustainable forest management. Both the bodies have similar guidelines for a Chain of Custody certification, but have different guidelines for Forest Management certification.

PEFC Forest Management: The global statistics of PEFC Certified forests reveal, Canada as the leading country in terms of certified forest area, followed by USA, Finland, Sweden, Australia and so on.

PEFC Chain of Custody: The PEFC CoC certification started with 59 certificates in the year 2001 and stands at more than 10,000 CoC certificates in the year 2015. France was the leading company with most number of certificates, followed by Germany, UK, Spain, Italy and so on.

Looking for FSC, and not PEFC? Find out about FSC Certification here: Forest Management (FM), Chain of Custody (CoC), Control Wood (CW) speak to us or visit Contact Us page.