加拿大有世界上最高的价格之一of loggingprimary forests, which are irreplaceable ancient forests that have never been industrially disturbed. Much of the pulp made from these forests goes into single-use tissue products like查敏厕纸，这是一个profligate useof threatened species habitat and vital carbon stores.

In an attempt to assuage public concerns, Canada oftenpoints tothird-party certification of this logging, ostensibly as evidence that it is sustainable. But Canada’s claim thatvoluntary certification充分保护森林是错误的，它掩盖了该国对长期可执行的森林保护所承担的责任。实际上，加拿大的联邦和省政府正在宣传认证作为解决方案，同时削弱和拆除森林保障措施。在世界的气候和生物多样性处于危机之中，这种动态加剧了主要森林损失。

Weakening permanent protections

Canada and various provincial governments are using voluntary forestry certification as a cover for their own growing inaction on forest safeguards. Canada ranks among the top global offenders forprimary forest loss, and places last among G7 countries for its土地保护。No Canadian province has implemented联邦政府forest protections for Canada’s threatened and iconic boreal caribou, leading to plummeting caribou populations.

加拿大的联邦政府是hidingthe true climate cost of widespread industrial logging, and ispositioning itself奖励各省猖cart的森林的清晰砍伐。安大略省有permanently exempted该省自己的濒危物种法案的伐木行业。魁北克省有特征its plans to ramp up logging as a climate solution, which is a position at odds with theurgingsof scientists from around the world. Yet in the face of all this,provincialand联邦governments claim that third-party certification of logging operations is evidence of the country’s strong forest protections.

While creditable certification can help to enhance the sustainability of logging operations where there is a strong regulatory regime in place, it is reckless for governments to treat certification as a replacement for legal biodiversity, climate, and human rights safeguards. Certification is voluntary, in that its protections are not permanent regulations, and its obligations are not legally binding. Companies can choose whether to pursue certifications and their associated requirements, or abandon them. They can also choose to have their operations certified by weak standards that have no meaningful environmental safeguards. As detailedhere与备受尊敬的森林管理委员会（FSC）相比，加拿大最广泛采用的证书的可持续林业计划（SFI）的保障要求极为薄弱。

Yet even FSC needs support from strong government frameworks in order to have lasting safeguards for forests. Various mechanisms within the FSC Canada framework could help move temporarily concessions toward permanent protections; some areeven intended by FSCto do precisely this. Yet governments are undermining, rather than supporting, tools that could lead to lasting forest protections.

For example, under the FSC system, logging companies are required to set aside the majority ofintact forest landscapes (IFLs)，是原发性森林的连接区域。即使scientists,非政府组织, andFSC系统explicitly recognize the unique and irreplaceable value of protecting IFLs, Canada’s provinces and federal governments do not. In fact, a 2021FSC委托报告在IFLS上强调，加拿大省甚至无法将IFL视为概念，这可能是FSC能够保护这些领域的最大障碍。省级政府并没有加强围绕森林保护措施的FSC工具，并将这些地区变成长期保护，而是积极破坏这些努力。

人权也受到威胁

Provinces are also using certification to shirk responsibility for human rights protections that governments should be guaranteeing. This is evident, for example, in the way logging companies have verydifferent requirementsaround honoring Indigenous Peoples’ right to give free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC), depending on which voluntary certification a company uses.

SFI的土著权利要求是extremely weak and vagueand its forest management standard shockingly does not even include the word “consent.” Yet even with FSC’sdetailed FPIC guidance, the harshest outcome of a company failing to secure FPIC would be losing (current or prospective) FSC-certification, which could pave the way for weaker certifications to swoop in, and would not mean that those Indigenous rights which were ignored will now be respected.

更广泛地说，根据自愿标准，FPIC与政府到政府promises to uphold Indigenous rights. Governments should not use voluntary certification—which does not have the regulatory power to make human rights protections binding and permanent—as an excuse for their own inaction.

With Canada’s federal and provincial governments failing to protect essential protections for human rights and forests, this leaves voluntary certification alone without a meaningful regulatory backstop. Moreover, Canada’s governments neither acknowledge FSC as the country’s only rigorous certification, nor do they back its key safeguards with regulatory teeth. Meanwhile, FSC needs to compete with weak greenwashing schemes that get credit for requiring barely anything of logging companies. This creates pressure for certification systems to weaken, rather than strengthen their standards, in order to appeal to the logging companies that can choose whether to engage them. This means governments’ regulatory inaction is incentivizing a certification race to the bottom.

Binding regulatory safeguards are vital

尽管他们正在削弱自己的监管保障措施，但加拿大的联邦政府和省政府声称森林认证证明了他们拥有可持续的伐木。这些政府甚至指出认证，试图阻止美国州政府在其进口的北方木材周围实施可持续性政策。具体而言，加拿大政府代表反对国家政策，这将要求北方伐木行动尊重FPIC和保障初级森林。加拿大政府在削弱合法森林保护的同时躲藏在认证后面是无可辩驳的。

Canada’s federal and provincial governments need to support rather than undermine legitimate certification efforts, by implementing and enforcing permanent protections for human rights, biodiversity, and forests. This means backing and fundingIndigenous-led initiativesto manage their traditional territories, safeguarding primary forests, and strengthening species protection laws. In the U.S., states and companies, as key purchasers of boreal products, should move forward and adopt strong procurement policies that protect Indigenous rights and safeguard primary forests in jurisdictions where such regulatory safeguards are lacking.

Voluntary certification under FSC can be an important tool. But FSC cannot and was never intended to serve as a substitute for legally enforceable protections that today’s beleaguered forests, biodiversity, and a warming climate urgently need.

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Courtenay Lewis是自然资源国防委员会的加拿大国际计划生态系统政策的经理。该帖子最初发表在NRDC Expert Blog。