The Forestry Commission and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development's (DARD) Forest Service are inviting comments from interested parties on a revision of the UK Forestry Standard (UKFS).
For the first time the UKFS will address ways in which sustainable carbon benefits can be secured in forest management as a means of maximising forestry's contribution to climate change mitigation. This is explained in a new Guideline that provides advice on managing woodlands in a changing climate.
The UKFS is a statement of the UK's approach to sustainable forest management, and sets out the environmental and other standards that forest management practices must achieve. It aims to ensure that forestry work complies with existing legal requirements such as those for preventing pollution and conserving soil, water, wildlife and cultural heritage features.
It also sets the standard for eligibility for Forestry Commission grants, felling licences and forest planning approvals. As well as the legal requirements, they encompass recognised good forestry practice in areas such as forest planning, community consultation, and the protection of landscape and cultural features.
Linked to the UKFS, and also available for comment, is a series of revised Forestry Guidelines that give more detail and explanation about how to meet the various requirements. The Guidelines cover biodiversity, climate change, historic environment, landscape, people and forest soils. Work is also under way on a revision of the Forests & Water Guidelines, which will be available for comment later in the year. The UKFS and the Guidelines are aimed primarily at woodland managers and owners, but will be of interest to anyone concerned with UK woodlands.
The Standard was first published in 1998, and revised in 2004, principally to reflect the devolution of forestry powers to Scotland and Wales.
Welcoming the new UKFS and Guidelines, Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs in the UK Government, said,
"Forestry has a great deal to offer in terms of mitigating climate change, so I'm very pleased that for the first time the UK Forestry Standard is able to address ways in which sustainable carbon benefits can be secured in forest management.
"This will be taken into account in consideration of applications for grants, felling licences or forest planning approvals. In particular, we will try to avoid deforestation (net losses of woodland) and net losses of forest carbon.
"The UKFS was developed specifically for forestry in the UK, and the history of forestry in the UK and the nature of its woodlands differ fundamentally from many of those of the rest of Europe. A principal role of the UKFS is therefore to demonstrate that international protocols on sustainable forest management, agreed at European and global levels, are applied in an appropriate way to forest management in the UK."
Explaining the background to the current revision, Richard Howe of the Forestry Commission added,
"This 2009 revision is being produced to clarify the requirements of the Standard in the light of recent developments in forestry policy and science, and specifically to:
- provide an explicit statement of all the forestry requirements for land managers, in common with statements for other land uses supported by European Union rural development measures;
- clarify the status of the Standard, and the assurances of sustainability provided by meeting the standard through the regulatory process;
- strengthen the role of forest planning;
- incorporate recent developments in the scientific understanding of forestry, in legislation and international agreements, and in the way forestry activity is monitored and reported;
- include domestic and international initiatives on climate change and the role that woodland can play in mitigation of and adaptation to climate change; and
- incorporate forest management requirements from the new versions of the UK Forestry Guidelines, and thereby strengthen the link between the Standard and the Guidelines.
Mr Howe added that the revised Standard was not new regulation, but it would set out existing requirements in a more explicit way. It would also establish a more direct and transparent basis for approvals of forestry grants and tree-felling licences than that of the previous version.
Copies of the consultation draft of the revised UK Forestry Standard can be downloaded from the Forestry Commission website at www.forestry.gov.uk/ukfs. Formal hard copies are not being produced, but paper copies of the web-based version can requested from Amanda Campbell on 0131 314 6368, or Heather Gordon on 0131 314 6329.
Comments on the draft revision should be sent to Amanda Campbell, Forestry Commission, Silvan House, 231 Corstorphine Road, Edinburgh EH12 7AT; email: amanda.campbell@forestry.gsi.gov.uk, to arrive no later than Friday 30th October 2009.
NOTES TO EDITOR:
- Forest management in the UK is regulated by the Forestry Commission and Northern Ireland Forest Service under the Forestry Acts. Other legislation is also relevant to forest managers, and this is also outlined in the new UKFS and Guidelines.
- Development of the UKFS & Guidelines has been informed by the international agreements on sustainable forest management, peer-reviewed forest research conducted in the UK and elsewhere, and by the policy directions and priorities of forestry ministers.
- 'Deforestation' is forest removal. Globally it is the second biggest source of the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming and climate change. This occurs because disturbed soils and burning and decaying trees and plants release carbon into the atmosphere, with no compensatory replanting or regeneration to reabsorb the carbon. Harvesting trees as part of sustainable forest management, however, causes low net carbon emissions because the new trees planted to replace those harvested reabsorb the carbon in a balanced, perpetual cycle.
- In addition to complying with the UKFS, which is a government requirement, many UK forest managers also choose to comply with the UK Woodland Assurance Standard (UKWAS), which operates independently of government. The UKWAS draws upon the UKFS, but compliance with it achieves independent "certification" that the forest or woodland is being responsibly managed according to standards set by independent, international certification authorities. Certification is voluntary and market-driven, meaning that evidence of certification is required by many companies which buy forest products for resale as an assurance to their customers that the products come from sustainable, well managed forests. Further information is available from the UKWAS website, www.ukwas.org.uk .
- The Forestry Commission is the government department for forestry in Great Britain. Visit www.forestry.gov.uk for further information. The government department for forestry in Northern Ireland is the Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture & Rural Development of Northern Ireland (DARD). For further information visit www.forestserviceni.gov.uk or telephone 02890 524480.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
- Forestry Commission - Charlton Clark, 0131 314 6500 or Colin Morton 0131 314 6249;
- Northern Ireland Forest Service press office - 02890 524619; pressoffice.group@dardni.gov.uk