Help us to ensure our Responsible Wood standards, internationally and nationally, meet your expectations. Why Responsible Wood Chain of Custody certification is right for your business. As a brand owner or retailer, you have an important role to play in promoting the sustainability of forests around the world. Some of our most important Australian and International Standards and Guides at a glance. We work through national forest management standards, developed by local stakeholders, enabling countries to tailor their requirements.
Our stats at a glance. Our governance is bottom up, which means it is our members who make the key decisions through a balanced voting system. Our board is made up of passionate champions Our members are a vital part of the PEFC alliance, and we have two different types: national members and international stakeholder members.
Responsible Wood is an Australian forest certification system. As a non-profit, non-government organisation, we are dedicated Certified forest managers have demonstrated their commitment to sustainability. Forest management shall be undertaken in a systematic manner appropriate to the nature and scale of the enterprise and provide for continual improvement.
Forest management shall maintain the productive capacity of forests and land. Forest management shall protect soil and water resources. Forest management shall protect and maintain, for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, their natural, cultural, social, recreational, religious and spiritual heritage values. Forest management shall maintain and enhance long-term social and economic benefits. To find out more please visit Sustainable Development Goals. Celebrating the Power of Trees.
Well-trained and healthy employees are essential to ensuring that these enterprises function safely and efficiently. In an examination of community-run forestry businesses in Brazil, certified enterprises did a far better job of protecting their workers than their noncertified peers. Members of certified enterprises were four times more likely to have taken part in a safety course; 94 percent of these businesses offered regular medical exams to their workers; all of the certified enterprises properly washed and stored their protective gear; and percent—four times as many as noncertified enterprises—offered medical attention to their employees when they were injured on the job.
For forestry businesses to be sustainable, they must operate in harmony with their surroundings. This means more than just the natural ecosystems in which they are located; it also applies to the human neighbors with which they co-exist. It means that a certified business must contribute to the social and economic development of a community by offering its members opportunities for employment and compensating indigenous groups for the traditional knowledge that they share regarding forest species and operations.
These are not only socially responsible steps, but they also benefit the environment. Providing jobs to local people, for example, can eliminate the incentive to engage in profitable but destructive activities such as wildlife poaching and illegal logging. Sustainable forestry should have a positive economic impact on its practitioners.
And in Mexico, a large FSC-certified community forestry enterprise that received technical assistance from the Rainforest Alliance increased its production volume, while staying within the parameters for sustainable harvesting; created an additional jobs a 12 percent increase over the baseline ; and earned a 10 percent price premium for the wood that it sold to a certified buyer.
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The criteria for certification includes requirements around the use of pesticides and genetically modified organisms, it insists on environmental impact assessments, and states that native species are preferred to non-natives. Restrictions are also applied to the total area that can be felled within large over 10 hectares semi-natural woodlands over a five-year period.
UKWAS certification ensures timber is from a sustainable source. Selective removal of trees from woodland for burning as fuel can greatly benefit wildlife and is seen as a sustainable woodland management option.
The carbon dioxide released by burning the felled trees will be balanced out by the CO 2 absorbed by newly planted replacement trees, making this practice carbon neutral.
Wildlife benefits from the temporary gaps in the canopy that are opened up by selective felling, as well as the variety of age structure in trees that this practice creates. The composition of the woodland and the way that it is managed will determine its value for wildlife.
It is possible to replicate important wildlife features in commercial forestry, such as gap size, gap creation rate and the amount of open space, which can suit the silvicultural systems of rotational clear-cutting and coppice.
However, other important features such as tree species diversity and the presence of very old trees and deadwood, which provide highly-important niches for a range of species, are generally not allowed in commercial management systems. As the trees mature they are felled and the natural wood is processed at saw mills.
Felled trees are replaced with seedlings. In this way the forest is constantly renewed. Sustainable forests are not only productive in terms of the wood products they provide but also they are regarded as places that can be exploited by the leisure industry.
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