Members of the FSC

The FSC has over 400 members in over 50 countries including environmental and social groups, progressive forestry and wood retail companies working in a balanced partnership to improve forest management world-wide. Its members include some large important players such as Sweden's Assi Doman (the worlds largest private landowner), Home Depot and B&Q (the largest do-it-yourself chains in the US and UK respectively), as well as many smaller companies, community forestry groups, indigenous peoples organisations, unions and environmental organisations. http://www.fscoax.org/html/noframes/5-2-2.html

© Greenpeace/Oliveira

100% FSC certified presious wood logs. Itacoatiara, Amazon, Brazil. February 2000.

FSC certification means that the forest of origin has been independently inspected and evaluated according to the environmental, social and economic principles and criteria agreed by the Forest Stewardship Council A.C. http://www.fscoax.org/html/noframes/1-2.html More than 17 million hectares (40 million acres) of natural and planted forestry operations in 33 countries world-wide have FSC endorsed certifications, with the areas certified increasing by 100 per cent each year between 1996 to 1999. http://www.fscoax.org/html/noframes/5-3-3.html

The FSC logo identifies products that contain wood from responsibly managed forests which have been independently certified according to the rules of the FSC. Wherever you see the logo you can be sure the product is from well managed forests.

FSC products in the market place. More than 20,000 FSC certified forest products are available in the global marketplace and a database of suppliers will shortly be available on the web: http://www.certifiedwood.org. FSC certified forest products have about five per cent of the market in parts of Western Europe and represent a value of half a billion dollars in the U.S., with the market estimated to be growing at a rate of 100 to 150 per cent per year.

Greenpeace and the FSC. Greenpeace is playing a very important role in contributing to the preparation of more detailed FSC forest management standards around the world, including British Columbia http://www.fsc-bc.org, Brazil http://www.fsc.org.br, Germany http://www.fsc-deutschland.de, Spain, Russia, the United States http://www.fscus.org and the Pacific, as well as carrying out important work with community and industrial forestry management operations to help them implement practices that will allow them to become FSC certified.

REGIONS

FSC in the Amazon. The Amazon Rainforest is the greatest reserve of commercial timber in the world, estimated at around 60 billion cubic metres, attracting more and more logging companies into the region. The scandal that less than one per cent is logged sustainably needs to be urgently addressed. Greenpeace is working with the FSC to develop standards which can promote ecologically responsible forest use in the Brazilian Amazon.