Adaptive risk management for certifiably sustainable forestry

The past decade has seen a global surge in forest management certification, with over 200 million hectares of the world's forest now certified as sustainably harvested. Because forests are some of the most species-rich environments on earth and more than 90% of the world's forests occur outside formal protected area systems, forest management certification will be one of the pervasive influences on global biodiversity for the foreseeable future. We find that current forest certification schemes are largely deficient because they fail to demand: (i) measurable management objectives for biodiversity, (ii) formal risk assessment of competing management options that integrate impacts on biodiversity, (iii) monitoring that directly addresses management performance requirements and a clear plan for how monitoring information will be used to make better management decisions, and (iv) ongoing research targeted toward practices that enhance biodiversity in managed landscapes. We argue that the credibility of certification schemes hinges on their ability to dictate scientifically defensible management systems for biodiversity conservation. We present a framework for adaptive risk management (ARM) of biodiversity that is both responsibly proactive and diligently reactive and recommend its incorporation in all certification schemes. We highlight the need for substantial government and agency investment in fostering ARM.