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29.01.2021
Preferred by Nature invites stakeholders to review and comment on the draft certification schemes assessment reports by February 5, 2021.
In October 2019, the European Commission launched a study on certification and verification schemes in the forest sector and for wood-based products which aims to provide an overview of certification systems, their strengths and weaknesses, with regard to their ability to meet the EU Timber Regulation. This study, which was entrusted to Preferred by Nature (formerly NEPcon), started in February 2020 and is scheduled to last 12 months.
After a consultation phase between June and September on the approach and assessment tools proposed by Preferred by Nature, the assessment of the schemes was carried out by their consultants and assessment reports were prepared.
Preferred by Nature is now launching a consultation phase for these draft assessment reports and indicates that it has incorporated the changes received from stakeholders during the first consultation, to improve the Scheme Assessment Framework (SAF) and Scheme Assessment Procedure (SAP). These revised documents have been applied for the assessment to the selected certification schemes : FSC, PEFC, ISO, SBP and OLB.
A first draft of these scheme assessment reports was sent to the scheme owners for comments and revision in November 2020. With most of their comments incorporated (dialogue are still in progress with them), Preferred by Nature would like to know stakeholder’s opinion and comments to the assessments.
In the case of FSC and PEFC, the findings from the national-level evaluations (Brazil, China, Russia and Romania) have been incorporated into the reports. The national scheme assessment reports will be released later. As a result, the scheme assessment reports available for review focus on international/central findings with some analysis of local adaptation.
Next steps
Stakeholders are encouraged to use the following links to read the scheme assessment reports and provide feedback by using the questionnaire below to comment on the separate points in the evaluation reports :
Please note the short guide to the questionnaire in the link before beginning. Comments will not be anonymous. They are made public afterwards and the identity of the person or entity will be known
The deadline for commenting on the report is end-of-day February 5th, 2021.
If you have any comments that you do not wish want to make in public, or if you have any other questions regarding this stakeholder review process or the project in general, please send an email to : EUTR@preferredbynature.org.
ATIBT has also been following this study from the start (see news from June 2020), do not hesitate to contact us for more information.
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