Forest Certification as an Instrument for Improved Forest Management within Small-scale Forestry

Since early 1990 ties, Swedish forest land is increasingly becoming certified. Today all major forest owners have joined the Swedish FSC-standard (Forest Stewardship Council), while small-scale forest owners preferably are joining the PEFC scheme (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification). With the overall aim of gaining a better insight into which small-scale forest owners that have decided to take up on forest certification, and how their forest management practices have been affected by this choice, two set of data has been analyzed; one consisting Data Base of Forest Owner Analysis (DBFOA) data relating to approximately 14,000 properties whereof 1955 were found to be certified, and the other one including data from a follow up questionnaire sent out only to owners with certified forest properties. Results show that certified and non-certified forest properties are managed differently and in particular that harvesting on certified properties has increased. Differences in management seem to be connected principally to the fact that forest owners from generally more active sub-groups embrace forest certification requirements. Moreover, our results shows that economic motives for joining a certification scheme are just as prevalent as environmental motives and a majority of forest owners regard certification as something that favors profitability rather than consider it to restrict economic yield.