Focal Area: Sustainable Use

Headline Indictor: Areas under sustainable management

Key Indicator Partner:      

Data Available: Global times series, 1995 onwards

Development Status: Ready for global use

Forests are highly diverse ecosystems; covering 30% of the total land area on earth, they provide habitats for around two-thirds of all species. As well as being important for biodiversity, forests also serve a wide range of ecosystem functions essential to human life. Forests themselves are home to around 300 million people, and forest resources are used for building materials, food and medicines. Forests also protect other landscapes and habitats against nutrient loss, erosion and landslides through the binding action or roots. The loss of forests would have significant impacts on biodiversity and also humankind.

Sustainable forestry and forest conservation are often viewed as being incompatible, as they are trying to achieve different objectives. For example forestry services are managing land for sustainable timber supply and forest conservationists are managing land for biodiversity, ecosystem services and other conservation values. One approach to combining these two objectives in environmental sustainable management is the use of forest certification schemes.

A range of forest certification schemes exist throughout the world, such as Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Pan-European Forest Council (PEFC), Canadian Standards Association (CSA), Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI), ISO 14001 and Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC). After a thorough assessment of the different certification schemes available and their contribution to biodiversity conservation, it was concluded that the area of forest certified by the FSC should act as a proxy for the ‘area of certified forest under sustainable management’ indicator. UNEP-WCMC has developed a database containing information on all forest sites designated under FSC, and site area data is available from 1995. The areas of these individual sites are combined to generate the global indicator of certified forest area under sustainable management.

As data for this indicator originates from individual FSC sites, this indicator can be disaggregated at the regional and national level. 

Total Area Under FSC Certification

Source: FSC & UNEP-WCMC

An increase in the area of FSC certified forest represents an increase in the area of commercial forest managed sustainably in respect to biodiversity. This increase would result in reduced pressures on forest biodiversity, which may subsequently reduce biodiversity loss. However, any benefit to biodiversity through the sustainable management of commercial forests would be undone if there was an increase in the area of natural forest converted to forestry.

A decline in the areas of FSC certified forest, would indicate increased risk of biodiversity loss, providing the once certified forest is still used for commercial forestry.

‘The indicator shows a positive response in regard to protecting biodiversity through the sustainable management of forests. The area of certified forest has increased from 3.24 million hectares in 1995 to 398.36 million hectares in 2009. The rate of site designation was greatest between 2000 and 2005 with an average area of 50.54 million hectares being designated per year. The designation rate decreased after 2005 with the average area of designation standing at 13.19 million hectares per annum between 2006 and 2008. It is important to remember that any benefit to biodiversity from certification designation would be undone if there was an increase in the area of natural forest converted to forestry.'

Data from FSC site reports will continue to be incorporated into the database to ensure the indicator is as up to date as possible. Maps of the locations of the sites will also be generated, so that the geographical distribution of the FSC sites can be compared.