Influences of the FSC certification process on forest governance in the Congo basin

The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro had two ambivalent consequences for tropical forests. On the one hand, it contributed to promote new forest policies that were inspired by the paradigm of sustainable forest management. On the other hand, given the lack of consensus to establish an international treaty on forests, it prompted environmental NGOs to develop private systems of forest certification, like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). For 25 years, these two dynamics have been interacting at the international and national levels, while most assessments of the impacts of forest certification are done at the local level, and especially in and around logging concessions, at least in the Congo Basin. By contrast, this paper analyzes the influences of the debate and the implementation of the FSC standards on changes in forest governance at the national level for 15 years in Cameroon, Congo and Gabon. Forest governance has not changed either regularly or identically in the three countries. However, a few observations are similar: in the 3 countries, the implementation of forest management plan remains unsatisfactory and the fight against corruption has not been effective. Conversely, the respondents indicate progress on the participation of stakeholders in the elaboration/implementation of public policy, better traceability of products and greater consideration for high conservation value ecosystems. According to these interviewees, FSC certification has had a mixed influence on forest governance at the national level for the past 15 years. Overall, many elements of forest governance have experienced only marginal or no influence from the discussions and the implementation of FSC certification in the Congo Basin. We describe the historical reasons for this low impact and detail how FSC succeed in influencing a few key aspects of sustainable forest management. (Résumé d'auteur