Development and economic significance of forest certification: the case of FSC in Bolivia

Certification receives major attention in the debate about sustainable forest management, and in Bolivia a relatively wide experience exists regarding Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification of natural tropical forests. The present paper studies the conditions imposed on forest operators for getting certified, and the export prices of certified vs. non-certified timber products. This provides a basis for assessing aspects of the effectiveness, efficiency and equity of certification. Effectiveness in terms of certified area has been modest: almost 1 million ha of natural forests, or 14% of the area with management plans, dominated by only five large companies that probably are among the best performing. The conditions for certification are a proxy of its impact, and they mainly regarded documentation, monitoring and environmental issues that might immediately be complied with. Forest management in Bolivia has developed on the basis of an external supported law reform imposing restrictive and controlled regulations and norms, and when fulfilling the new law requirements the FSC principles and criteria are largely met. Only little improvement was obtained through certification in itself. Furthermore, deforestation persists unabated. Therefore, it appears that major roles of the FSC certification have been (i) regulation-oriented verification of compliance with already established norms and (ii) creation of a forum for consensus formation between dominating policy formulating actors. Higher prices, in the range of 5-51%, were paid for the majority of exported certified timber products. There are indications that the price premiums exceed the direct operational costs of certification, but this excess profit will presumably disappear when the market develops. However, the substantial support not based on private initiative that has been given to the certification development restricts the interpretation of the concept as a successful market-based forest policy instrument. The dominance of large enterprises in certification confirms the fear that this tool distorts the conditions of forest production at the national level-small-scale and community based enterprises had difficulties in getting certified.