Mongabay's first report from our new 'what works in conservation' series reveals that the evidence for the success of timber certification schemes like Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is both mixed and weak:
https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/does-forest-certification-really-work/ We paired a Princeton PhD ecologist with a Mongabay staff writer and tasked them with reviewing the available evidence in hundreds of peer reviewed studies, and the result of months of work is that while it appears that the FSC leads to better environmental outcomes, it's failing at the other parts of its 'triple bottom line' i.e. people and profit. See the handy infographic within the article for more, each square is a representative study you can click thru to. The main finding is that more evidence is needed, and so in their discussion at the end, the team calls for more studies, esp of the impacts of certification on workers and local communities, which are extremely limited to date. Our team: - Zuzana Burivalova, PhD ecologist at Princeton in NJ, has been thinking hard about the findings' implications, i.e. what does it mean for people and planet if FSC etc cannot deliver and ultimately fail, we had her on our podcast recently following our interview with Paul Simon, it begins at minute 31 here <https://news.mongabay.com/2017/03/audio-paul-simon-on-his-new-tour-in-support-of-e-o-wilsons-half-earth-initiative/> - Shreya Dasgupta, Mongabay staff writer based in Bangalore - Mike Gaworecki, editor for the project and Mongabay staff writer based in NYC Please leave your thoughts and reactions in the comments section at bottom of the article <https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/does-forest-certification-really-work/>, and thanks all, Erik -- Editor and Content Strategist Mongabay.com
