Anyone who has ever gone shopping for teak hardwood flooring or furniture may have come across companies or products bearing an FSC certification label and not exactly known what to make of it. Are FSC labels nothing more than some mendacious ploy by a coalition of crafty manufacturers seeking to create a verisimilitude of ecologically friendliness or are such labels issued by a trustworthy external organization with environmental and social principles? What does an FSC certification really signify?
FSC is an acronym for the Forestry Stewardship Council, an organization that was founded in 1993 with the goal of establishing a stringent and effective certification process aimed at balancing economic interests with social and ecological necessities. To vendors of products such as teak hardwood, the FSC certificate would be a point of pride and a way to draw increasingly environmentally conscious customers to their showrooms. To customers the FSC certification is assurance that the product(s) they are purchasing conform to the highest practical ethical and environmental standards.
Teak hardwood has been a particularly interesting case to observe due to the fact that it effectively illustrates the ever increasing global awareness of environmental issues as well as the environmental impact of modern warfare. A particularly tragic part of this awareness is the ongoing internal conflict in Burma. The on again off again regional conflicts that started shortly after the conclusion of the second world war has had a markedly detrimental impact to the dwindling worldwide supply of old growth teak forests. Teak forests not destroyed by warfare have been critically over harvested both legally and by environmentally unaware pillagers.
The net result is not only the tragic loss of life but the near decimation of the country's once abundant natural resource. The loss has not gone unnoticed by consumers who have become aware of the rarity of teak trees, and know not to support companies that illegally pillage. Instead consumers are turning en masse to organizations that are supplied by sustainable teak tree plantations. Such plantations can be found across the globe and have gone a long way to ensure that genus Tectona, or teak, will not become extinct in the foreseeable future.
This awareness is what drives consumers to look for an unbiased certification process such as that provided by the FSC. Manufacturers and vendors are driven to it because the process recognizes their needs to make profits from their efforts while providing guidelines and business practices that are tolerable.
To governments the FSC certification process is a way of looking at their ecological resources as a sustainable economic opportunity. The FSC actively encourages governments to re-evaluate their land usage strategies to factor in the growing global demand for wooden products. For example: a government official can either decide to turn a blind eye illegal foresting by those that would exploit such a natural resource for themselves, or they can view the forest as a communal resource from which seedlings might periodically be removed to start new plantations which would generate revenue and improve the general economic condition of the populace as a whole and generate additional revenue.
Don't mistake the social, political, and short term economic challenges of stopping those that illegally cut down teak trees. The task is daunting to government officials and the time it takes to properly grow semi-natural forests or plantations only exacerbates those problems.
It is important to realize that the FSC rules and regulations change with the times. The changes are decidedly positive in nature but just because an organization has an FSC certificate today does not mean they will have one tomorrow even if they themselves don’t make any changes to their operations and operating practices. All FSC rules and regulations are, however, derived from a relatively simple set of ten principles.
These principles cover subjects such as compliance with applicable laws, recognition of the rights of indigenous people, reduction of environmental impact when feasible, constantly updated management plans, active participation in the restoration and conservation of natural forests, and the long term sustainability for local communities, forest and staff. These principals and the rules derived from them are all subject to some degree of interpretation and thus can executed in different ways, but frequent FSC and external reviews ensure that strict compliance is more than simple lip service.
So what is FSC-certified teak hardwood? It's teak hardwood from sustainable plantations processed by manufacturers in an environmentally and economically balanced way. Purchasing FSC-certified teakwood also helps promote governmental protection policies and further raise environmental awareness in economically challenged areas of the world.