The FSC general assembly is FSC’s highest decision-making body, attracting hundreds of participants from indigenous people, environmentalists, business and others in FSC membership. The GA is traditionally held every three years, however the general assembly planned for 2020 was re-scheduled to take place in two parts at the 2021-2022 general assembly. The first part took place virtually in 2021 and the second part will take place as a hybrid event with in-person and online components.
The in-person part of the FSC general assembly is planned to take place in Bali, Indonesia. Learn more about what happens at the general assembly.
The FSC Global Membership Meeting 2020 presented a general overview and highlights of the achievements in 2020, and general priorities and key issues for 2021.
In order to accommodate several time zones and enable the participation of our members from all regions, the session was held in the morning and repeated in the afternoon. Both sessions ran live and contained the same discussions.
Over 400 registered participants from around the world joined the presentations and subsequent discussions. You can find the meeting recordings and presentations below.
During this session, we will present the motion submission schedule and we will have a demo on how to submit a motion through the FSC Motions platform.
In this session, members had the opportunity to discuss with the motion’s proposers and members. The motions discussed were:
We hosted two identical sessions to accommodate different time zones.
Scroll down to access the recording of the sessions.
Over 110 participants from North America joined the presentations and subsequent discussions.
You can find the meeting recording and presentations below.
These global meetings amongst international members kicked-off motion discussions. It included the presentation of the highest-ranked motions resulting from the discussion prioritization exercise completed by the membership in early September. We showcased the survey results, followed by an introduction of the highest-ranked motions by chamber and a lively discussion with the motion proposers.
In these global discussions, members had the opportunity to discuss with the motion proposers of the two highest-ranking motions by chamber:
We invite all members to continue the discussion and post questions or discussion points in the Motions Platform area for each motion for the session and for further discussion after the event. Having the questions posted means that the proposer can make responses there and the discussion can then continue in this area.
Recordings of the sessions, chat transcripts, and other relevant materials can be found below.
These meetings took place via Zoom.
To view all submitted motions, visit the Motions Platform.
Over 200 participants from Latin America joined the presentations and subsequent discussions.
You can find the meeting recording and presentations below.
The National Forest Stewardship Standard (NFSS) of Malaysia has been updated and is now available in the FSC Document Centre.
FSC is extending a call for applications until 14 April 2020. We are still seeking candidates for a technical working group to develop a risk-based approaches (RBA) assurance system for forest management certification. They will also finalize the revision of the RBA procedure and guideline.
There is so much happening at FSC around innovations. We are exploring wood identification technologies to improve traceability, building a new tool to screen bad actors before they enter the FSC system, developing a blockchain-based system to track real time transactions of FSC-certified materials, and many others.
In June 2022, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Assurance Services International (ASI) launched the third transaction verification (TV) loop on bamboo supply chains to proactively find out if there are any integrity risks that need to be addressed.
The first draft of the standard FSC-STD-60-004a FSC International Generic Indicators for the use of Highly Hazardous Pesticides is now available for public consultation until 01 April 2020 and can be accessed here. We invite all stakeholders to provide feedback.
In 2020, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) commissioned SmartCert, an independent assessor, to assess allegations made by Mighty Earth against the activities of Olam Palm Gabon – a joint venture of Olam Group and the government of Gabon.
FSC is calling for submissions for abstracts for posters that illustrate ideas and examples of innovation, research findings, best practices and pathways that are relevant to the GA theme, to FSC Motions and / or to the FSC Global Strategy.
FSC is seeking candidates for a technical working group to develop a risk-based approaches (RBA) assurance system for forest management certification, and to finalize the revision of the RBA procedure and guideline. The call for applications is open from 13 March to 31 March 2020.
FSC has postponed the International Africa Membership Regional Meeting until the second quarter of 2019. This decision was taken to ensure more members could join the event.
Publication date: 1 February 2023
Effective date: 1 July 2023
End of transition period: 31 December 2024
The following requirements aim to ensure that the certification body decision making entity has sufficient information on which to base its decisions with respect to conformity with FSC forest stewardship standards, and to help FSC ensure that there is consistency in decision making between different certification bodies.