This is your go-to space for all editions of the FSC General Assembly Members Bulletin. Here, you will find key updates, deadlines, resources, and stories curated to help you stay informed and engaged in the lead-up to the FSC General Assembly 2025. Each issue highlights important developments, motions, and opportunities for participation—ensuring you are well prepared to shape the future of FSC.
The importance of forest stewardship is more apparent than ever as we face global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequities. The FSC Global Strategy 2021-2026 focuses on growing our reach by demonstrating the value and benefits of forest stewardship in combatting these challenges and achieving our 2050 vision of resilient forests sustaining life on earth.
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.
Effective 25 February 2020, organizations seeking to source controlled wood from Chile and Honduras are required to use the latest FSC risk assessment to conform with standard FSC-STD-40-005Requirements for Sourcing FSC Controlled Wood.
The FSC risk assessment for Chile is only in Spanish, and the FSC risk assessment for Honduras is only in English.
The FSC Interim National Standard (INS) of Austria applies to all types of organizations working in natural forests and plantations in the country, including small and low intensity managed forests. The INS is also applicable to non-timber forest products (see section ¨A.2 Scope¨of the INS for more details). The standard becomes effective on 01 March 2023.
The public consultation is open between 11 July and 14 August 2022 and will be used to collect stakeholder feedback on the joint review report of FSC-STD-20-001 V4-0 General requirements for FSC accredited certification bodies and two related procedures, FSC-PRO-20-003 V1-0 FSC Certificates and License Agreements and FSC-PRO-20-004 V1-2 General Requirements for an FSC Training Programme.
The FSC Indigenous Foundation (FSC-IF) is driven by the challenge and opportunity that Indigenous Peoples manage a quarter of the Earth’s surface, including areas that contain some of the richest biodiversity in the world.
Since May 2016, the Governance Review Working Group (GRWG) has been working on an extensive analysis and review of FSC’s governance structure, mandated by motion 42 of the General Assembly 2014. This work included an intense deliberative process with conference calls, meetings, presentations, consultations, discussion papers, webinars, motion proposals and will conclude with the presentation of our findings and recommendations at the upcoming General Assembly in Vancouver.
FSC has published and advice note to formally implement the decision made by the FSC Board in January 2020 to streamline and facilitate the transfer of International Generic Indicators version two (IGIs V2-0) to National Forest Stewardship Standards (ADVICE-60-006-01 V1-0 EN Advice Note on Incorporation of new International Generic Indicators introduced with FSC-STD-60-004 V2-0 into National Forest Stewardship Standards).
In August, the FSC International Board of Directors approved the report submitting the generic criteria and indicators, giving the green light to the development of auditable requirements for certificate holders.
FSC will organize webinars between 15 and 18 May to discuss the decisions taken at the latest Board Meeting 77 (BM77). The webinars were initially planned from 26 April, but were rescheduled to give more time to members to prepare and send their questions beforehand.
The objective of this standard is to provide the requirements for FSC-accredited certification bodies to assess conformity of The Organization against applicable requirements of the FSC normative
framework with regards to forest management certification, as well as reporting and decision making.
To access the older version 3-0 effective only until December 31, 2025, click here .
Completed NRA for Chile.This document is an assessment of the risk of sourcing material from unacceptable sources in a given country, developed according to FSC-PRO-60-002 V3-0 EN The Development and Approval of FSC National Risk Assessments.This risk assessment shall be used when implementing FSC-STD-40-005 V3-1 EN Requirements for Sourcing FSC Controlled Wood.Please Note: Certificate holders have until 04 September 2020 to adapt their due diligence system to include the changes brought about by FSC-NRA-CL V1-0. The CNRA will remain available for download until that date. ++ Click here to submit a change request for this FSC risk assessment ++
The objective of this document is to specify the requirements for FSC-accredited certification bodies for developing Interim National Standard (INS) or Interim Regional Standard (IRS), depending on the geographic scope of the standard, for the certification of responsible forest management and the responsible management of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) at the Management Unit (MU) level. These standards shall be based on the International Generic Indicators (IGI) and shall address the regional, national or sub-national conditions in which they are to be used and shall consider input from local stakeholders. The FSC Board of Directors at FSC International, acting through the Policy Steering Group (PSG) shall approve Interim National Standards (INS) before they can be used for FSC certification purposes. In March 2020 the revised procedure was published to reflect the FSC Board of Directors’ decision during their 82nd meeting to delegate the approval of INS to the Policy Steering Group.