The FSC National Forest Stewardship Standard of South Africa: FSC-STD-ZAF-01-2017 V1-0 Plantation Forestry, All scales of operation EN, was approved in November 2018.

Existing certificate holders will need to be audited against the new standard within 12 months of the effective date of the new standard to retain their certification status. Any certificates based on the old standard will be considered expired by FSC as of 1 September 2020. The effective date is 1 March 2019.

Where major corrective action requests (CARs) are issued as a result of a non-conformance with a new requirement, the client may be granted an extension of up to six months to close them. New requirements are those elements that are entirely new to the standard rather than a rewording of previous requirements.

You can download the Standard and accompanying Risk Assessment HERE.