notwithstanding that initially they had been very reluctant to do so for reasons discussed above. How did this occur? We must examine first how this standard was created and its evolution over time.
First, in contrast with the creation of CERTFOR, several respondents228 asserted that the creation of the FSC national standard was accomplished through an informed and public debate involving “lots of people” and a diversity of viewpoints. As a social NGO representative claimed:
“Well, I think there is no comparison at all [with CERTFOR]. Since the creation of the national FSC there was a marathon of participative and democratic activities. Lots of people participated. We had a lot of debate over the creation of the indicators, which didn’t happen in CERTFOR”. (interview with N-RM-02).
However, there is a link between the development of the FSC scheme and CERTFOR. As one researcher229 who participated in the technical committee to create CERTFOR explained, the process to create the CERTFOR indicators also had fed into the process to create the FSC national initiative because both rule-making processes shared some similar technical experts (although this could not be confirmed by other interviewees). It is unsurprising, therefore, that some respondents230 commented that both schemes were technically very similar (both schemes are presented in Appendixes 10 and 11).
Second, the creation of the FSC national initiative was lengthy, taking more than 5 years to conclude the definition of national indicators against the FSC 10 principles and 56 criteria. The initiative was first spearheaded by CODEFF231 (a Chilean ENGO) – grouping other NGOs, part of the forest industry and some universities – and it was legally named as “the Chilean Initiative of Independent Forestry Certification A.G.” (ICEFI), undertaking the task of
227 See CORMA (2015a).
228 Interviews with N-RM-02, A-IX-01, N-RM-05, N-RM-06, N-RM-04, S-RM-01, N-XIV-01 and IW-MB-01. 229 Interview with R-VIII-01.
230 Interviews with PFB-MB-q02, PFB-MB-q03, R-MB-02 and S-RM-02. 231 The Corporation for the protection of Flora and Fauna (a local ENGO).
creating the national standards for native and plantation forests232. In 2005, this group publicly launched the first FSC Chilean initiative.
It is important to realize that this FSC scheme-setting process did not meet the expectations of everyone. For example, one industry officer233 noticed that “due to the hard negotiations when created, the FSC structure is technically chaotic and hard to be implemented”, whereas for one ENGO member234 “the FSC requirements weren’t sufficiently prescriptive and based mostly on Chilean regulations, which were lax and subject to misinterpretation”.
Third, although the FSC national standard was launched in 2005, it was not accepted by most of the large plantation forest industry (i.e., that owning most plantation forests) until some years later. This situation concerned some representatives of the environmental chamber who felt that the credibility of this young standard might be threatened since the interests of the social and environmental chambers were overrepresented. As this ENGO member commented:
“A small group of us who were working in the FSC’s board of directors realized that we had to co-opt [more] companies to have a proper power balance in the three chambers; otherwise the credibility of the system would be lost and the FSC would be like a wobbly table” (interview with N-RM- 05).
However, this objective was largely met in subsequent years. The turning point for the FSC Chilean initiative occurred in 2007 with the appointment of Hernán Cortés, a member of the economic chamber, as the President of FSC Chile; this fact had a positive impact in the credibility of the standard from the large plantation forest industry’s viewpoint and spurred them to adopt it235.
Almost concurrently, the large plantation forest industry had received an ultimatum from their European markets (suppliers of printing companies) demanding that they certify their operations under the FSC since they would no longer accept the CERTFOR scheme as a valid alternative.236
Hence, in 2009 the most prominent plantation forestry businesses in the country, that is, CMPC-Mininco and ARAUCO announced that they endorsed the FSC and began an
232 Interview with N-RM-04 and see also FSC-Chile (2015a). 233 Interview with PFB-MB-p01.
234 Interview with N-RM-06. 235 Interview with N-RM-05. 236 Interview with R-VIII-01.
implementation process that would last for the next four to five years, adding more than 1.2 million hectares of certified plantation forests to the system in 2013237, a remarkable increase from the previous situation of only 527,599 certified hectares of both plantation and native forests. Therefore, by 2014, a total of 2,355,427 hectares were covered by the FSC certification, including extensive new areas of native forests owned by these two large plantation forest enterprises.
Fourth, although the creation of the ICEFI group was necessary to establish the FSC and promote it as a credible alternative of SFM, by 2013 FSC Chile was a fully-fledged organization that was financially self-sustainable, with almost double the staff and with better technical and administrative capacities than in its first years238. Another important change was that the initial balance of the three chambers changed to the detriment of the environmental and social interests, particularly with the entry of CMPC-Mininco and ARAUCO to the FSC governance. As this ENGO member described:
“Four weeks ago we [the social and environmental chambers] had a meeting as there are new things that had come out, but we had reduced our work capacity to such an extent that we almost didn’t have any way to give an opinion. And you know that each certification process involves consultation work, training, a lot of different stuff, etc. But the problem is that our capacities are low, both within the social and economic chambers. This doesn’t occur in the economic chamber, which is governed by firms. For example, we had the chance to go through a document about controlled wood and in the meeting we held there were 10 people in the economic chamber and 2 people each in the social and environmental chamber. So you start to entirely lose the balance in the discussions” (interview with N- RM-05).
This new balance among the three chambers is evident from the Chilean FSC website239, which reports that the economic chamber, at 34 members, is more than double the social and environmental chambers, with 15 and 9 members, respectively). For another ENGO member, this situation was due to the lack of time and of financial resources of the actors within the social and environmental chambers:
“For example, if we are a group of stakeholders discussing forest conversion, which is a technical and political debate where the technical elements are really important, you have to give 2 to 3 days of your time, read documentation, get prepared and get there [to the meetings]. Of course, they [small organizations and NGOs] do all this stuff on a voluntary basis and for them this effort is not negligible. When I have to comply with the time required by FSC I can do it with some difficulties, but some representatives
237 See FSC-Chile (2015c). 238 Interview with N-RM-05. 239 See FSC-Chile (2015b).
of social organizations don´t have the [financial] resources to travel by their own. If they are not participating, the FSC limps.” (interview with N-RM- 04).
Moreover, two NGO members240 of the FSC environmental and social chambers, respectively, expressed their concern about the limited capacity of the stakeholders to monitor the companies’ behaviour once they obtained their certificate. For them, the FSC system was unable to provide any technical training or verify that the social and environmental actors had sufficient resources and expertise to perform their functions.
The evolution of the FSC governance and its acceptance by the large-scale Chilean plantation industry is not unique. Evidence from other case studies in Germany (Cashore et al., 2004:187) suggests that the efforts to gain broader acceptance from “audiences” beyond their original “core” support group are a common path followed by both the FSC and its competitor standards. Indeed, in the British Columbia and in some US cases, industry associations have become involved “inside” the FSC governance, through their respective national initiatives, to leverage the rule-making processes (Cashore et al., 2004: 87, 125), demonstrating how fragile can be the balance among the chambers241 (Boström and Hallström, 2013; Boström and Hallström, 2010). This situation, in the North American cases, led to some environmental organizations to express their concern about the intervention of the industry in the FSC governance, so as to make FSC national standards less strict. The Chilean case, thus, shows a similar pattern to other forest industries: although initially rejected, the FSC was adopted and then co-opted by the large forest industry.
Finally, it is noteworthy that certification, in general, was also accepted by the state as a means to achieve sustainable forest management goals. As illustrated by this government forest officer:
“So when you know they [the firms] have an ISO system and are certified [under the FSC or CERTFOR] you feel confident that they are meeting the standard requirements and the legislation. You know they are performing their operations well and you focus your resources on people who are really breaking the law”. (interview with A-IX-01).
Furthermore, at the time of conducting my fieldwork in 2013, CONAF and FSC Chile had embarked on a joint project to encourage small forest owners to implement the FSC
240 Interviews with N-RM-06 and N-XIV-01.
241 For these authors, there is a significant global power imbalance among the FSC chambers (economic chamber:
338 members, environmental chamber: 272 members, and social chamber: 144 members) that may be harming the legitimacy of this standard. For them, the FSC should ensure not only a broad multi-stakeholder participation but also an appropriate power balance among the different interests (Boström and Hallström, 2013).
certification242. Most forest officials expressed their reliance on forest certification – regardless of the scheme – as an instrument to enforce forestry laws and regulations and to achieve CONAF sustainability goals.