CSA—sustainable forest management standard

Certification program overview

The CSA SFM Requirements set out in the standard are specific and cover off three key and interrelated areas: public participation, performance, and systems to achieve the desired results.

Public participation—The CSA Standard requires organizations to seek comprehensive and continuing public participation, including a special effort for Aboriginal peoples, at the local community level for each forest. The public identifies forest values of specific importance to their environmental, social and economic concerns and needs. The public also takes part in the forest planning process and works with the organization to identify and select SFM goals, indicators and objectives to ensure these values are addressed. The public participation requirement of the Standard is one of the most rigorous of all certification standards in the world today. Because Canadian forests are primarily publicly owned, it is very important that a Canadian forest certification standard involves the public extensively in the forest management planning process. Forest management that meets the SFM Requirements of the Standard must involve a relationship between the organization and the local community.

Performance—The CSA Standard requires adherence at the local forest level to the best suite of broadly accepted Canadian forest values generated to date - that is the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers' (CCFM) set of Sustainable Forest Management criteria. The criteria address many key aspects of forest management including maintenance of biological diversity, forest ecosystem and productivity maintenance, soil and water protection, ecological cycles, benefits to society and the rights of aboriginal forest communities. The CCFM criteria and elements are fully consistent with those of the Montréal and Helsinki processes, both internationally recognized by governments around the world. In the CSA Standard, adoption of the CCFM criteria and elements as a framework for value identification provides vital links between local level SFM and national and provincial-scale forest policy, as well as a strong measure of consistency in identification of local forest values across Canada. In the Standard, the CCFM criteria have been adopted verbatim, but the elements have been revised to reflect the need for meaningful application at the DFA level. In the Standard, the organization works with the public to identify local values, goals, indicators and objectives that reflect these national criteria and incorporate them into forest management planning and practices. Decisions are made together with the public during this process.

Systems—The CSA Standard has system requirements which are consistent with the internationally recognized ISO 14001 Environmental Management System Standard, but goes beyond those system requirements by setting out performance requirements that must be specific to each local forest. This Standard includes the continuum of establishing a Policy Planning Implementation and Operation, "Checking and Corrective Action" and Management Review. A strong system's foundation enables organizations using the Standard to implement, track, and monitor their progress towards meeting the economic, social and ecological performance objectives for the defined forest area.

Continual Improvement—The principle of "continual improvement" is at the heart of the Standard. Indeed, the Standard uses adaptive management procedures which recognize that SFM is a dynamic process that must incorporate new knowledge acquired through time, experience and research, and that must also evolve with society's changing environmental, social and economic values. The Standard requires an annual review of the system and performance in the forest to identify areas for continual improvement.

Third Party Independent Audit—To become certified to the Standard, the organization must go through a third party, independent audit of the SFM Requirements in the Standard. The audit is conducted by a registrar (certifier) accredited by the Standards Council of Canada. In addition, the individual auditors employed or contracted by the registrar have the requisite forestry expertise and are certified as environmental auditors by the Canadian Environmental Auditing Association. Audits to the Standard are done by accredited certifiers and certified auditors who are independent of the standards-writing body (CSA). In addition to the initial audit, there are mandatory annual reviews, which include both a document review as well as spot-checks in the field to ensure progress is being made towards the achievement of objectives and that the SFM Requirements are upheld. In addition, a full re-registration audit is required every three years following the initial audit.

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