Hlengiwe Ndlovu, Divisional Environmental Manager for Sappi Forests, proudly displays the PEFC-endorsed Sappi Group Scheme certificate for small scale growers.
Five small scale timber growers in KwaZulu-Natal have become the first participants in the award-winning Sappi Khulisa programme to achieve forest certification through the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) in the Sappi Group Scheme for small scale growers.
The five timber growers, with a total 8,143 hectares of timber area between them, have been successfully audited and awarded a PEFC Group Scheme certificate. The recipients of this significant milestone, and founding members of the Sappi PEFC Group Scheme, are:-
• iMfume Cluster, consisting of more than 20l individual small growers from the Mfume district near Scottburgh, • Sobengwe Trading, Ixopo, • MG Farming, Richmond, • Mclean M, Underberg, • Braecroft Timbers (Pty) Ltd, Underberg.
This follows years of intensive efforts by Sappi - working together with other stakeholders in the forestry industry - in addressing the barriers to certification experienced by small-scale growers in South Africa. PEFC is an internationally recognised certification system that provides assurance to end-use consumers of wood products that the raw material is sourced from sustainably managed forests.
Members of the Sobengwe Trading forestry team, Ixopo. Certification provides small-scale growers with access to international markets and assures consumers that wood-based products are responsibly sourced from sustainable forestry operations.
Sappi was the first grower company in South Africa to achieve PEFC certification through the Sustainable African Forest Assurance Scheme (SAFAS) in 2021, after starting with the process in 2015. This involved participation in the development of a Forest Management Standard for South Africa, the development of mechanisms to support certification requirements and, in 2018, the endorsement of the standard and certification procedures. A certification tool was developed by the SAFAS team to assess plantations, based on several factors including environmental, social and economic conditions specific to South Africa.
“After years of collaboration and dedicated commitment to developing a forest certification standard for South Africa, this achievement marks a historical moment in our long journey to support and make forest certification more accessible to the small landowners that participate in our supplier programmes,” commented Duane Roothman, Vice-President of Sappi Forests.
Forest certification is used as a tool to ensure that responsible forest management practices are implemented in the forest, and that wood from certified forests can be identified throughout the supply chain. It enables conscious consumers to choose responsibly sourced wood-based products, and gives consumers the assurance that the woodfibre used to manufacture the products they are buying has been legally harvested in accordance with sound environmental practices, and that social aspects, such as indigenous rights, have been taken into account.
Forest certification and other voluntary codes of conduct are key tools for promoting sustainable consumption and production, and for combating deforestation, forest degradation and illegal logging by providing proof of legality and responsible management, harvesting and manufacturing practices.
Putting certification within reach of small-scale growers
Small-scale growers harvesting wattle in Matimatolo, KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. (Photo courtesy of SAFAS)
Free certification for small-scale growers operating on communal land – this is the goal of the Sustainable African Forest Assurance Scheme (SAFAS), a non-profit company on a mission to promote sustainable forest management and ensure that all timber growers in South Africa have fair access to certification.
SAFAS intends to make this achievable through the establishment of a Landscape Certification Programme - that functions like a co-op and focuses on relevant risks - to make certification accessible and affordable to all timber growers, including small-scale growers on communal land.
This is just one of several innovative initiatives that the SAFAS team has introduced in the past few years to promote sustainable forest management in Africa. Key among these is the Value Based Platform (VBP), a web-based platform that integrates data from a wide range of sources. This helps to provide integrated, locally relevant solutions to the broader challenges facing sustainable development, such as habitat degradation, inequality, poverty, poor governance, and accelerated climate change. This enables forest managers to identify and prioritise the key risks in their operations in the context of the landscape within which they operate.
Another innovative SAFAS initiative is the Community Label. This is based on the concept of forestry businesses being a part of the wider community with a responsibility to play a positive role in their development for mutual benefit through timber procurement, providing market access and promoting sustainable management practices on the road to achieving certification. The Community Label promotes the forging of mutually beneficial partnerships between larger forestry organisations and community forestry enterprises.
These initiatives are not just sugar-coated wish lists as they are beginning to gain traction on the ground through practical implementation.
In 2020 Sappi utilised the Value Based Platform to complete individual assessments on all 25 of their forestry plantations in South Africa, covering some 370 000 ha, becoming an essential internal auditing tool to enable the Sappi forestry team to prepare for the formal certification process. Sappi’s South African plantations are certified by both FSC and PEFC.
Earlier this year Sappi used the VBP to assess a group of private timber suppliers in southern KwaZulu-Natal against the requirements of the SAFAS standard. The assessment included 12 private commercial timber growers, two land reform timber farms and 100 small scale growers grouped into two clusters.
According to SAFAS General Manager Steve Germishuizen, the assessments produced some surprising results:- • The small-scale grower groups were the least risky in terms of overall sustainability. • The most consistent risks across all suppliers were related to health and safety, training and management of contractors.
Steve said that the VBP allowed the growers to engage with the certification process in a positive way that helped them to see it as a potential benefit and not just an administrative burden.
NCT Forestry is also using the VBP to assess their growers’ sustainability risks and to prepare them for certification under their PEFC group scheme.
Mechanised Eucalyptus harvesting operation, Mpumalanga. It is efficient and highly productive, but this system does not maximise job creation.
About SAFAS The SAFAS certification system has been developed in South Africa by local stakeholders and is endorsed by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), a globally recognised forest certification system.
It is the culmination of years of work behind the scenes by local stakeholders including Forestry South Africa, SAPPI, NCT, TWK and the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries. The motivation behind the SAFAS initiative stems from the realisation that most small-scale and family-owned forestry operations typically have moderate or low environmental impacts while providing significant social benefits directly at the local community level, yet they have been largely unable to achieve certification. Large commercial forestry operations on the other hand, which have a greater environmental impact and limited local community employment footprint, are almost all certified.
This anomaly means that small-scale growers located in under-resourced rural areas in Africa may be denied access to premium fibre and wood product markets by virtue of their inability to get certified.
Now forestry operations joining the SAFAS Landscape Certification Programme (LCP) have an easier pathway to being certified. The overhead costs associated with certification will be shared amongst members of the programme according to the scale of the operations.
The ultimate goal, according to Steve, is for small-scale timber growers on communal land to have free certification. Revenue generated by the LCP will be used to promote sustainable forest management or reduce the annual costs of certification for the members. It is essentially a cooperative system and members will have a say in how their money is spent.
At the heart of the LCP is the Value Based Platform which helps forest managers to identify and prioritise the key risks in their operations, in the context of their landscape. The platform links the risks up to the relevant indicators in the certification standard. By eliminating irrelevant and low risk indicators, the platform vastly simplifies certification.
Upon joining the LCP, a timber grower undergoes a risk assessment that provides a prioritised list of risks, along with supporting information and the documentation required to mitigate those risks. The grower then knows exactly what is needed to achieve or maintain sustainable forest management standards and certification.
SAFAS also provides the training, support and resources required to tackle any technical and managerial challenges associated with achieving sustainable forest management certification through PEFC.
Labour intensive Eucalyptus harvesting operation on a community-owned timber farm, Eastern Cape.
What sets this system apart is that the risks to sustainable forest management of each grower member are determined according to the landscape within which the operation is located. This simplifies the certification process which focuses on the actual risks that the forestry operation faces.
This system works because site and socio-economic factors define, to a large extent, the risks and opportunities that forestry operations face. These factors characterise the forestry landscape and shape the nature of forestry businesses.
It is unsurprising that in areas of similar topography, climatic and socio-economic conditions forestry takes on a very similar structure and appearance. This realisation is critical when measuring forestry against a national or global standard. What is good or normal practice in one landscape would be unacceptable in another. Understanding the landscape context is the best away to understand these differences. For example, it is much harder to control alien plants in a steep, high rainfall area, with a subtropical climate, dominated by woody vegetation, than in a flat high altitude grassland area that is prone to fires and frosts. It is therefore necessary to understand that context when making an assessment of the effectiveness of an alien plant control programme.
Below are examples of two very different forestry landscapes and some of the risks and opportunities the forestry operations in those landscapes face:- • High production on flat land: High national economic importance, high productivity, high efficiency, global competitiveness, high impact, limited biodiversity, low ecosystem services, limited local employment • Communal multifunctional: Multiple benefits for local communities, high potential for ecosystem services, low impact operations, moderate biodiversity, low national economic importance
Joining the LCP allows timber growers of all scales to get certified as part of the landscape they operate in. The LCP provides all the documentation, supporting information and SAFAS works with the growers to maintain compliance.
SAFAS GM Steve Germishuizen surveying the biodiversity that is still thriving at Ozwatini, KZN midlands, where small scale tree farmers grow wattle and Eucalyptus and practice mixed farming with vegetables, crops, cattle and goats.
Five steps to certification with the LCP • Complete a Risk Survey on the Value Based Platform after which you will have access to your risk assessment detailing the key risks faced by the operation in context of the landscape. • You receive a report detailing what is required to comply with the SAFAS standard. • You will be guided through the LCP management system, which contains all the documents and supporting information necessary for certification. • Once compliant with the SAFAS requirements you will be included in the programme to be certified in the 3rd Party audit by the Certification Body. • Once the 3rd Party audit is completed you will be certified under the PEFC.
“What makes PEFC-endorsed national forest certification systems so relevant and valuable is that they are locally developed and owned,” commented Ben Gunneberg, former CEO and Secretary General of PEFC International. “They respect the country’s operational and cultural conditions and are accessible to forest owners of all sizes, with a particular emphasis on smallholders.”
Gabon pushing for certified timber
Marking timber harvested from the Ogooué concession in southern Gabon.
Gabon Advanced Wood Sarl (GAW) is a company in Gabon which holds a timber concession. It recently obtained a new Forest Stewardship Council™ forest management certificate for its Ogooué concession in the south of Gabon, located in the Haut Ogooué and Ogooué Lolo provinces.
The company’s operations are located in the town of Moanda and supply certified logs to processing industries established in the Nkok Special Economic Zone (SEZ), a 1126 ha multi-sectoral industrial park located 27 km from Libreville. It includes industrial, commercial and residential zones. In its entirety, it brings together 144 companies from 19 countries operating in 22 industrial sectors, including a cluster of 84 companies dedicated to wood processing. (https://www.gsez.com/).
The Ogooué concession covers 179 861 hectares of forests, including 25 996 hectares of strictly conservation area. The concession includes about 309 inventoried tree species and iconic and threatened mammalian species such as elephants, chimpanzees and gorillas.
The Ogooué concession in southern Gabon, which harvests tropical timber that is processed at a nearby special economic zone, has achieved FSC certification. The Ogooué concession covers 179 861 hectares of forests, and includes 25 996 hectares of strictly conservation area which is home to threatened species including forest elephants, chimpanzees and gorillas.
This is the first FSC forest management certificate in Gabon since 2014 and an important milestone for Gabon's ambition to have all their forest concessions certified by 2025. With this certificate, the total area of natural forest responsibly managed in Gabon under FSC certification reaches 2 241 051 hectares. There are now more than 5.5 million hectares of FSC certified forest in three countries of the Congo Basin: Cameroon (341 708 ha), Gabon (2 241 051 ha) and the Republic of Congo (2 989 168 ha).
Covered 85% by forest, on 22 million hectares, Gabon has a stock of exploitable wood of 130 million m3 of Okoumé and 270 million m3 of other species. GSEZ has enabled the country to develop and modernise a wood sector that was previously not very promising by relying on specialisation, one-stop services and alignment with the national development strategy. With 3.4 million m3 produced each year, Gabon has become Africa’s leading producer and exporter of tropical plywood, and the world’s second largest exporter. The country intends to go further in adding value to its wood products by transforming GSEZ into a centre for the manufacture of "Made in Gabon" furniture by 2025.
Plywood plant at the Nkok Special Economic Zone in Gabon. The Gabon government has committed to getting all forest concessions in the central African country certified by 2025.
Faced with growing demand, GSEZ has made sustainability, traceability and certification of wood sourced in Gabon and processed at its facilities one of its priorities. All of Gabon’s forest concessions are operated according to the sustainable forest management practices prescribed by the Gabonese Forest Code. In terms of traceability, since October 2018, GSEZ has benefited from the services of the Tracer-Nkok agency, which filters the logs entering the zone in order to limit the risk of illegal timber as much as possible. By 2022, all the country’s forest concessions will be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and/or PEFC Gabon in order to improve the traceability of the wood and ensure respect for communities and workers.
Forest workers prepare for their shift, Gabon.
Sustainable small-scale tree farming
Eza Mapipa of NTE (left) discusses bark quality with local community wattle growers.
Small-scale wattle growers in the Matimatolo area near Greytown in the KZN Midlands have developed their own unique ways of growing and harvesting their trees that is largely sustainable with minimal impacts on the environment. But the irony is that up until now they have been unable to get their small tree plantations certified by the global certification organisations because they have been unable to fulfil the complex administrative requirements and couldn’t afford it anyway.
With international markets increasingly demanding that the products they sell are derived from responsibly managed plantations that have been certified by recognised certification bodies, the market access of these small scale tree farmers is no longer assured. They are also missing out on the premium prices paid for certified timber products.
NTE, a local manufacturer of tannin products that are derived from the bark of wattle trees (Acacia mearnsii), has been working with the local wattle growers to help them improve their yields and to get certified through the newly established SAFAS system. SAFAS is geared specifically to South African conditions and is endorsed by PEFC, one of the globally recognised certification organisations.
This could turn out to be a game-changer for the small scale growers located in remote rural areas like Matimatolo where there is little infrastructure and very few job opportunities.
