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RESEARCH ARTICLE: Institutional Change and Sustainable Forestry: The Development and Struggles of Forest Certification in Finland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2008

Keith Mars  and
David Ostermeier
Keith Mars
Affiliation:
Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee
David Ostermeier*
Affiliation:
Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee
*
Address correspondence to: David Ostermeier, University of Tennessee, 274 Ellington Plant Science Building, Knoxville, TN 37996; (e-mail)daveo@utk.edu
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Abstract

Forest certification has quickly emerged as a prominent non-governmental policy approach to forest management, where market and civic stakeholders play increasingly important roles in new institutional development. In Finland, this development has been characterized by an adversarial and politicized environment between entrenched interest groups competing for decision-making authority in forestry governance. In this article, we discuss key distinctions between the two rival certification schemes, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Finnish Forest Certification System (FFCS), and explain the factors in the development process that led to the domination of the forest landowner- and forest industry-led FFCS. A central finding is that, although an alternative to traditional governmental approaches to forest management, the dominant FFCS adopted and modified traditional rulemaking processes and institutionalized the status quo of rulemaking and rule makers that existed prior to the development of forest certification. This resulted in the elimination of new perspectives in FFCS certification development. An absence of incentives and facilitating mechanisms to build trust between old and new policy participants fostered the collapse of a new integrated policy network in Finland.

Environmental Practice 10:4–12 (2008)

Type
FEATURES
Information
Environmental Practice , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 4 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © National Association of Environmental Professionals 2008

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