Welcome to this first of the plus 20 forums designed in part to celebrate FSC's 20th anniversary
but in part to tackle some of the beefy questions that bring us all together which aren't just
certification but are to do with forestry.
I'm here now to celebrate the 20 years anniversary of FSC.
20 years ago I worked with WWF in Denmark and I remember sort of hearing about and seeing
the first things around FSC.
So on FSC certified forest and to be very honest I thought wow this is never going to
amount to anything.
But now being here 20 years old having 180 million hectares certified having 30,000 certificates
around the world I think we've achieved a fantastic amount of success.
In many countries we have managed to shift the forest management paradigm.
Forest are today not managed in the same way they were 20 years ago.
We have achieved a lot in terms of making sure that nature is protected better, that
people are better integrated, that we take care of the water resources inside the forest
in many many places and I'm very proud of that.
The communities they are they are pride being on FSC certification they are pride.
We are convinced that FSC is a very good way to reduce poverty also.
Some of the proudest moments I have had during my time with FSC have been when I've seen
research document that FSC makes a difference for nature and for people and we got very
good research showing that for the forests of the Congo basin for the forests of the
Scandinavian countries we do make a difference and I think demonstrating and showing that
difference that we make is going to be one of the main things that we need to achieve
in the future.
Very few people 20 some years ago would have imagined FSC would be what it is now.
I'm optimistic about whatever FSC is involved with it tends to create positive outcomes.
FSC comes out of a frustration that governments in the United Nations were not able to agree
how to deal with securing and protecting the world's forest.
We see now attempts by the UN to develop global goals for forest management.
We think these are very important and we want to engage in developing these further and
making sure that they do get implemented.
We are here tonight to celebrate a number of absolutely brilliant ideas.
These were the brilliant ideas of our founding fathers who decided to establish the FSC.
The brilliant idea was not to establish the FSC.
The brilliant idea and there were at least two of them wants to say look if governments
can't solve our problem we bloody hell better do it ourselves and to do that together between
environmental actors, social actors and economic actors I think was a stroke of brilliance.
