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Sustainable Forest Management is the stewardship and use of forests and forest lands in such a way, and at such a rate, that (1) maintains their biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality and their potential to fulfill relevant ecological, economic and social functions, now and in the future, at local, national, and global levels, and that (2) does not cause damage to other ecosystems. Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe 1990 (http://www.mcpfe.org/)
"Fundamentalist” Environmental organizations have disputed the sustainability of the forest management by the French forest owners. They tried to prohibit the international export of their timber on the grounds that rules or commitments are not enough if there is no guaranteeing control by external experts(audits). Administrative controls are deemed insufficient.
The French forest owners have been managing their forests in a sustainable and socially responsible way for half a millennium, since the BRUNOY order passed by the good King Philip VI of Valois, the first such order signed in 1346 (the coppice were, then, cut every twelve years for firewood, a practice detrimental to obtaining timber for the Royal Navy and for building construction );
The French Forest owners have subsequently had Richelieu, Colbert, the Forestry Code and the Laws of forest policy, the latest being the Basic Forest Law of
July 9, 2001 defining three major issues at stake for forests:
economic forest management;
environmental and landscape management;
management of recreation and leisure activities.
However, these environmental and naturalist groups, (Greenpeace and WWF in particular) have denied any credibility to forest owners in France because we were not “certified”, and only, the certification with its audit of external expertise brought credibility to commitments of sustainable management;
The French forest owners then created a forest certification: the Pan European Forest Certification or "PEFC, became the Program Endorsement of Forest Certification, in addition to the Forest Stewardship Council or FSC" Greenpeace;
French Forest owners are now “certified” as sustainable managers according to PEFC, at least those who voluntarily adhere to such commitments.
Are these gentlemen, environmentalists of all kinds, most recently interested in sustainable management, themselves certified ? Are their organizations also certified, in order to be credible? Where does their funding come from and why are their accounts not published (balance sheet, income statement and annexes) nor audited by auditors?
"We do not inherit the Earth from our parents we borrow it from our children ’Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
Despite a half-millennium of sustainable management, private forest owners are not doing so badly as the forestation rate in France in 2009 reached 28.6% of the whole French territory, or 15.7 million ha of forests ,of which 74.10% private,i.e. an increase of 1.7 million hectares in 20 years (including 1.4 million in privately owned forests). Yet in spite of these results,in order to be credible vis-à-vis the international community, they established the PEFC certification in sustainable management adapted to their small properties.
Translation Philippe d’Hémery
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