How to offer certification for the 2020 PEFC standards

In January 2020, PEFC published the revised international standards for PEFC Chain of Custody (ST 2002), PEFC Trademarks (ST 2001) and Certification Body Requirements for Chain of Custody (ST 2003). These three standards entered into force on 14 February 2020, with an 24-month transition period.

Certification bodies need to ensure their practices are in line with the revised ST 2003:2020, and that they are accredited against both the revised ST 2002:2020 and ST 2001:2020, before they can offer PEFC chain of custody certification against the 2020 PEFC Chain of Custody standard. 

As the three standards are linked, the 2020 versions of these standards must be used together. An audit is either conducted against and according to the 2020 versions of the three revised standards, or against the three previous versions. 

For example:

  • Certification bodies can only certify against the 2020 Chain of Custody and Trademarks standards, if they do so according to the 2020 Certification Body Requirements standard.
  • A company can only use the 2020 Trademarks standard if they are certified against the 2020 PEFC Chain of Custody standard and the audit is conducted according to the 2020 Certification Body Requirements standard. 

 

Offering certification for the 2020 PEFC standards 

In order to gain accreditation for the 2020 PEFC Chain of Custody (ST 2002) and PEFC Trademarks (ST 2001) standards, your auditors, certification decision makers and reviewers need to attend a chain of custody training recognized by PEFC International. 

You also need to ensure your processes are in line with the requirements of the 2020 Certification Body Requirements standard (ST  2003).

You can find the PEFC recognized training schedule on our website. You can receive updates on the latest training opportunities by signing up to our newsletter at the bottom of this page or by following us on Twitter.

If your internal PEFC chain of custody training programme was recognized by PEFC through the PEFC Training Recognition Programme (TRP), you will need to get it recognized again before offering certification for the revised standards.

If you are interesting in participating in the TRP, either to renew your recognition or to apply for the first time, you can find more information on our website or contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. You can also sign up for the next scheduled PEFC TRP event.

For more information, please see the draft TRP guidelines.

After the transition date of 14 February 2022, no PEFC chain of custody certificates against the older version of the standard may be issued. From this date, companies certified against the older versions of the PEFC standards will have one year to adapt their systems to the 2020 versions. 

The 2020 standards and introductions to their changes

Certification Body Requirements:

https://cdn.pefc.org/pefc.org/media/2020-02/662c02fc-e1a3-4d45-9755-c546bd645ad2/fda4062a-f875-546b-a650-d01ba3911662.pdf

https://cdn.pefc.org/pefc.org/media/2020-02/635b959e-3065-4ae8-aaac-3a7d40bc0b9f/f5224e0c-3acb-5cac-a701-ecc0ad36f3ef.pdf

Chain of Custody:

https://cdn.pefc.org/pefc.org/media/2020-02/aaae8a0f-0975-48f9-9ef2-c0b41f9aff3f/9fe878bd-f381-5951-b6ed-b2204ccc2cb0.pdf

https://cdn.pefc.org/pefc.org/media/2020-02/66954288-f67f-4297-9912-5a62fcc50ddf/23621b7b-3a5d-55c9-be4d-4e6a5f61c789.pdf

PEFC Trademarks:

https://cdn.pefc.org/pefc.org/media/2020-02/7c414b9b-43ab-4b07-9d83-ed3aa384303b/6443f822-2c03-58ce-a0ae-9e4867c07127.pdf

https://cdn.pefc.org/pefc.org/media/2020-02/d1ad5a21-0267-4db4-a41b-07fd577ffdea/3abf07e8-b7f9-5f42-ba2a-9ca608ee415f.pdf

source: https://pefc.org/for-business/certification-and-accreditation-bodies/how-to-offer-certification-for-the-revised-pefc-standards

 

 

Survei Pasar PEFC

Bapak/Ibu yang terhormat,

PEFC sedang melakukan survei singkat untuk memperoleh pemahaman yang lebih dalam tentang hal-hal yang relevan dan penting dalam bisnis Bapak/Ibu terkait dengan sertifikasi hutan. Hal ini akan membantu kami untuk lebih meningkatkan kepercayaan publik terhadap sistem dan pelayanan kami ke depannya.

Survei tersedia dalam 2 (dua) bahasa:

  1. Link https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GY5S2CDuntuk Bahasa Inggris; dan
  2. Linkhttps://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GY5S2CD?lang=iduntuk Bahasa Indonesia.

 

Survei hanya akan memerlukan waktu sekitar 15 menit, dan respon Bapak/Ibu adalah sepenuhnya anonim.  

Survei ditutup pada hari Jumat, tanggal 31 Juli 2020.

Data anonim akan dibagikan dengan mitra PEFC dalam proyek ini, yaitu Hasan & Partners (Ltd), dan hanya digunakan untuk keperluan analisis data.

Apabila Bapak/Ibu memiliki pertanyaan mengenai survei ini, silakan menyampaikannya melalui email ke This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (dalam Bahasa Inggris).

Kami sangat menghargai masukan Bapak/Ibu.

Terima kasih banyak telah bersedia untuk berpartisipasi dalam survei ini. 

 

Take part in our survey LinkedIn 1

 

PEFC 20th anniversary: a year of celebrations

This time last year, PEFC celebrated its 20th anniversary. 30 June 2019 was the starting point for a year of special anniversary articles and videos about the history, development and future of our organization. One year later, as we turn 21, let’s look back over the last 12 months of celebrations!

On 30 June 1999, European small-forest owners came together to create an international forest certification system that had their needs at heart, and PEFC was born.

We began our celebrations by looking back at those very early days of our organization. We dug out some old photographs and highlighted the key milestones that have helped shape PEFC into what it is today – the world’s largest forest certification system.

Smallholders have always been at the heart of our work, and we have ensured that small- and family forest owners can benefit from certification. We developed group certification to make PEFC certification affordable and practical for smallholders. Throughout our 20 years, we have continued to innovate as we make sure that PEFC certification works for everybody.

In our year of celebrations we’ve also heard from small-forest owners themselves: Swedish forest owner Sven Erik Hammar spoke about smallholders and PEFC, while Riikka Joukio, a family forest owner and PEFC International Board member, looked back at 20 years of forest certification, and into a sustainable future.

How PEFC works

We know that it can be difficult to understand how PEFC exactly works. Our anniversary year gave us the perfect opportunity to explain: from how we are governed to who is responsible for developing our standards and how we ensure governance and standards development are kept separate and impartial.

Our members have also been involved. Andre Laroze from Certfor/PEFC Chile told us about the revision process of the Chilean Forest Management Standard, and MTCC, our national member for Malaysia, walked us through the development and revision of their national standard.

But it’s not just technical issues. We’ve seen how we use online communication campaigns to reach out to consumers with our message about the importance of forests, certification and sustainable forest management. 

We also carry out outreach to sectors that rely on forest-based products, promoting the importance of them procuring and working with certified timber - from construction and paper, to packaging, biomass, bamboo, rubber and furniture, even the fashion industry.

In conversation with Ben Gunneberg

Throughout our 20th year, we have heard from Ben Gunneberg, our CEO since the beginning of PEFC, as he has shared his memories a

Check out his first video in the series, reminiscing about the very first days of PEFC, below, and take a look at all the videos on our YouTube channel.

A celebratory PEFC Forest Certification Week

Once a year, the entire PEFC alliance gathers together for PEFC Week. In 2019, as we celebrated our anniversary, we went back to a significant place of our history: Würzburg, Germany, where one of our first meetings took place. 

The Würzburg meeting from 1999 proved to be a turning point in our history. 

It was the moment when everyone involved committed to the creation of PEFC: there was no turning back! 

20 years later, we were back to celebrate the achievements from 20 years of caring for forests globally and locally, welcoming 150 representatives from PEFC members from around the world, for the biggest PEFC Week ever.

One year of celebrations

With this article and with PEFC’s 21st anniversary, we are closing our year of celebrations.

If you’ve missed any of our 20th anniversary articles, you can find them all in one place in our news section. If you head to social media, search for the hashtag #20yearsofcaring to discover everything that the whole PEFC family has done over the past year – it has been a global celebration!

source: https://pefc.org/news/pefc-20th-anniversary-a-year-of-celebrations

 

xternal recognition and awareness raising: an expression of trust in PEFC

By buying PEFC-certified products, we can all help support local communities to continue looking after our forests. Learn more about the importance of supporting sustainable forest management from our CEO Ben Gunneberg!

“Although we have already been reaching out to over a million people to safeguard the forests and to manage them in a sustainable way, we do have a problem. When the shoppers in the shop see a wooden product, they still think that they are participating in the destruction of trees,” he explains.

“They are not realising that by buying these products they’re helping local communities and they’re safeguarding those forests that they love.”

“If we don’t buy the wooden products, if we don’t support the sustainable safeguarding of those forests, then people will find other jobs and will start looking at cutting down those forests to make them into agriculture or to provide other food production. That’s why it’s so important to buy wooden products.”

What can you do?

Each of us can help protect the world’s forests! All you need to do is to choose PEFC-certified products the next time you go shopping. Especially if it means that you choose forest-based materials instead of alternatives such as plastic.

If we don’t use our forests, the land will be used for other purposes, such as cattle ranches or soy plantations. Buying forest products, such as wood and paper, gives the forest value, it creates demand, and provides a financial incentive to keep a forest a forest.

source: https://pefc.org/news/external-recognition-and-awareness-raising-an-expression-of-trust-in-pefc

 

Spreading the word around the globe – our online communications campaigns

Forest certification is one of the few tools that can directly connect the consumer to the forest. It enables each of us to make a difference to the world’s forests through buying certified products.

We are reaching out to consumers to show that forest certification is about so much more than only trees – and online campaigns are an increasingly important aspect of this work. In the past year, we have been reaching out to, interacting with, and hearing from people around the world through a number of online communication campaigns.

20 years of caring for our forests

The campaign to our 20th anniversary kicked off last July. After a soft launch at the beginning of 2019, the “year of celebration” began the day after PEFC’s anniversary on 30 June. It was on this day back in 1999 when European small-forest owners came together to create PEFC – an international forest certification system that had their needs at heart.

Our 20th anniversary campaign told the story of PEFC in a series of chapters, from the early ideas until today. We have been publishing texts, photos and videos about PEFC’s history, approach, members, stakeholders and much more, to make both forest certification and what we do at PEFC more understandable and tangible.

This is the final chapter of the campaign, and as we are looking back to an exciting anniversary year, it’s time to say THANK YOU for the interest, likes, shares and the feedback from around the world!

Head to FacebookTwitter or the news section on our website to discover different elements of the campaign and learn more about PEFC and our history and future!

The ‘Experience Forests, Experience PEFC’ Photo Contest

Through awe-inspiring forest photos, our ‘Experience Forests, Experience PEFC’ Photo Contest takes us to the magical world of forests.

Every year from April to June, we invite photographers and forest lovers from around the world to enter their forest photos. Running for the fourth time this year, the photo contest has brought us thousands of fantastic images of forest landscapes, wildlife and people living, working or playing in the forest.

National photo contests are run by our PEFC national members around the world, and everybody, from amateur to professional photographers, is welcome to enter their forest photos on Instagram. The best photos from the national contests enter the international contest to compete for the PEFC Photographer of the Year award.

Stay tuned as we will be highlighting the winners of those contests over the next few months, before announcing the overall winner in November.

#ForestFactFriday

Do you know how many people depend on forests for their livelihoods? How old the oldest tree is? And how many tree species there are?

Our newest social media campaign #ForestFactFriday shares interesting and unexpected facts about forests and the plants, animals and people living in them. 

Every Friday, we are publishing another forest fact that will for sure surprise you and make you see forests through different eyes.

Follow us on FacebookTwitter and Instagram and learn more about the world’s forests!

Humans of the Forests

Humans of the Forests is a video campaign launched early last year. In this micro documentary series, we look beyond the facade of forests only being nice places to spend one’s leisure time, to show how vitally important they are for so many people around the world. In the videos, we hear the inspiring stories from people who are in touch with forests and timber in their daily lives, and get a sneak peek at different professions within the forest.

For the first instalment we went to Italy, where we learnt about the daily work of a forest manager, women in forestry and timber as the ideal construction material in earthquake regions. The second instalment took us to Chile, where we met Chile’s first female forest fire monitor, a forestry worker who has spent his entire professional life in the forest, and an indigenous Mapuche woman who has reached economic independence thanks to the forest.

The Humans of the Forests videos have not only been shown at film festivals, the United Nations and a number of seminars, but also made it into the international press, among others on the cover page of the Australian magazine Timber & Forestry e-news.

To hear the full stories, head to YouTube and meet the Humans of the Forests!

Be ready for more!

As our 20th anniversary campaign comes to a close, there are already some new campaigns on the horizon. Our future campaigns will see more photos, more videos and more chances to win fantastic prizes! Follow us on FacebookTwitter and Instagram to stay up to date!

source: https://pefc.org/news/spreading-the-word-around-the-globe-our-online-communications-campaigns