Business View Magazine | March 2021

43 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE MARCH 2021 Greenpeace and many others are part of one membership group called the Environmental Chamber; we also have the Social Chamber with local municipalities and unions around the world; and finally we have the Economic Chamber representing industry, with the major producing companies and also consumer companies, like Proctor & Gamble and Kimberly- Clark in North America. “There are three Chambers throughout the world and now, in Canada, we have a fourth Chamber with Indigenous peoples. But they all have the same voting power. So we have a true consensus and compromise, in terms of applying our standards on the ground that reflect the wish and the will of society. It’s not biased, or one party versus the other, and that makes the government structure of FSC unique and very strong.” BVM: Does FSC have the ability to create industry standards? Dufresne: “Yes, we do. FSC will issue forest management standards to be applied on the ground, and they are updated or revised on a regular basis – it takes five to ten years. We just issued the last one in 2019 in Canada. It’s quite an achievement because we’re addressing major crises in the Canadian forests with regard to biodiversity and the decline of Woodland Caribou, but also Indigenous rights outlined in the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples. So we issue those standards to be implemented on the ground but we do not audit them directly. That is the responsibility of a third party audit structure that gets their accreditation internationally, independent of FSC. It assures the impartiality of the application of our standards. “Our standards are requiring aspects of government regulations but we’re not based on that. Most of the time we go further on a voluntary basis to “blaze the trail”– to be at the leading edge of responsible forest management FOREST STEWARDSHI P COUNC I L OF CANADA FSC Caribou Forum 2020 FSC educational school activity