Updating the standard is important for maintaining FSC certification in Ukraine, upholding its values and protecting the integrity of the system in the context of the ongoing war.
For almost 2 years, the Working Group on development and implementation of National Forest Certification Standards for Ukraine has been developing updates to the FSC Forest Stewardship Standard for Ukraine. The need for such updates is primarily due to the consequences of contamination of FSC-certified forests with explosive objects and the corresponding risks to the health and safety of both forestry workers and other participants in the forest certification process.
The normative basis for updating the standard was a number of changes in the FSC normative framework, which concerned the possibility of excising areas contaminated by explosive objects from the scope of certification (see more details at https://ua.fsc.org/ua-en/newsfeed/expecting-the-update-of-fsc-national-forest-stewardship-standard-of-ukraine). Accordingly, the addition of Annex J “FSC criteria, indicators and verifiers for excision of areas contaminated with explosive objects from the scope of certification in accordance with FSC-POL-20-003 V 1-0 for Ukraine” is the main change in the updated FSC forest stewardship standard for Ukraine.
Other changes in the standard are mainly related to the above-mentioned annex. In particular, the relevant additions were made in the introductory part of the FSC-STD-UKR-01.1-2024, namely, in the subsections that define the scope of the standard (subsection 2.2), contain background information on the standard development (subsection 2.3). Section 3 of the standard has also been supplemented with information on the process of developing its 1-1 version. Subsection 4.1 is supplemented with the updated list of the developers of the specified version of the standard (the composition of the working group as well as the expert have been listed). The note on the interpretation of indicators (Section 6 of the standard) is supplemented with explanations on the numbering of criteria in Annex J and the nature of the corresponding indicators and verifiers.
The glossary of the standard was supplemented with two terms and their definitions (“Areas Contaminated by Explosive Objects”, and “Very Limited portion”).
With the support of FSC Ukraine, the updates to the standard were translated. In any case, the English version available from https://connect.fsc.org/document-centre/documents/resource/428 will take precedence and be considered correct.
For any questions on the standard, please contact FSC Country Requirements Team by emailing to country_requirements@fsc.org or Pavlo Kravets (FSC Ukraine National Representative): p.kravets@ua.fsc.org