Development of a forest certification standard compatible with PEFC and FSC's management requirements. A case study from Greece

Greece currently has no national forest certification standard.This paper explains how a draft forest management standard forGreece was developed to be compatible with both the Forest StewardshipCouncil and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certificationschemes requirements. The draft standard was tested in two contrastingforest areas to investigate its ease of operation, to indicatenecessary refinements to the standard and to reveal major areasof weakness in current forest management practices. Field testingshowed that the standard was operationally efficient and thatrelatively few changes to the standard were necessary. Majorweaknesses in current management practices were identified asbreaches of health and safety, poor training of forest workersand inadequate consultation with stakeholders.