As you may be aware a significant proportion of the NZ Forest Estate is FSC certified. Of the 1,757,451 net stocked area, 1,186,776 or 67% is certified.
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international, non-governmental organisation dedicated to promoting responsible management of the world’s forests. FSC's certification system enables businesses (including investors) and consumers to choose wood, paper and other forest products made with materials that support responsible forestry.
New Zealand has its own FSC Forest Stewardship Standard (NZ FSS) that targets the most pressing issues in New Zealand forestry today, including living wage requirements; better protection of waterways, addressing issues related to erosion, and establishing culturally appropriate means of communication with Māori communities affected by forestry operations.
There are ten principles of these three are relevant to contractors, these include compliance with laws, worker’s (includes contractors) rights and employment conditions and community relations. Organisations (Forest Managers/owners) are audited relative to these principles each year.
Requests for feedback
Forestry contractors and FICA as stakeholders can be contacted by the auditor to contribute feedback to the auditor, in fact FICA is regularly contacted to provide feedback. Often this is difficult as the feedback sought might be for multiple locations the organisation operates in, and we don’t have good records of who our members work for nor any documented feedback. As a result, to date FICA has been reluctant to comment.
FICA met with FSC ANZ to get a better understanding of what type of feedback FSC ANZ is after, both positive and negative. Given the importance of contractors in the forestry model in NZ, it was agreed it is important contractors have a voice.
As a result of this FICA will be updating its member database to include Forest Managers/owners that contractors have and are currently working for and FICA will maintain a register of verified feedback. Rowan will be in contact with all members to further this work.
