Forest certification, institutional capacity, and learning: An analysis of the impacts of the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme

While forest certification remains one of the favored policy instruments for assessing the long-term sustainability of the world's forest resources, its impacts on the forest management systems undergoing certification remain vastly understudied. While previous studies have focused almost exclusively on the impacts of FSC certification on forest management practices, our research focuses on elucidating the impacts of the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS) on the forest management systems of Peninsular Malaysia. Using primary and secondary data, our study analyzes the types of noncompliance issues present in these systems and their frequencies and distributions over space and time. We found that the distribution of noncompliance issues across the MTCS forest management standard was skewed toward the more ecologically-related criteria. Yet we also found evidence of significant improvements having already occurred in the forest management systems of Peninsular Malaysia. Overall, our systematic analysis of the role of certification in shaping forest management systems in Peninsular Malaysia suggests that PEFC-endorsed schemes like the MTCS may ultimately lead to positive impacts in these systems.