Program Item Details
TITLE: Brent Rabik, Director of Strategic Programs, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc., Athabasca
SUBJECT: #143 Al-Pac Undergoes Forest Stewardship Council Certification Audit
SYNOPSIS: Alberta Pacific Forest Industries is
undergoing the first FSC certification audit to be held in this province. It’s also a test of the new boreal standard developed by the Forest Stewardship Council.
AUDIO: Download Audio (mp3 format)
TRANSCRIPT:
#143 November 9, 2004
Interview starts at 1:06
Intro: Something new is happening in Alberta this week and that’s an FSC Audit. FSC is the Forest Stewardship Council, a group formed in the early 1990’s to press for better environmental and social stewardship of the world’s forest resources. In fact, you can purchase FSC certified products at stores like Home Depot. But those products come from outside the province.
Several years ago, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries, a pulp company based in northeastern Alberta, decided to pursue FSC certification. But a lot of things had to take place before that could happen, including the development of an FSC standard for the Boreal Forest.
This week, I had the opportunity to travel to Al-Pac’s pulp mill near Athabasca to join in the first day of the audit. Then in the evening our group headed out to an open house in Lac La Biche. Brent Rabik is the director of strategic Projects with Al-Pac.
Brent Rabik
BR: In the forest products business these days there’s an ever growing need, largely through pressures in the marketplace, have companies’ forest management practices independently third party verified as to meeting certain standards. And those standards look at a number of issues around environmental performance, relationships with communities, your workers, with indigenous people. And these standards are being developed to give assurances to the marketplace, to customers, to the people of Alberta in a sense that own the landbase that we operate on, that we’re being good stewards of those forest resources.Currently in Canada there are three standards that are being used on the landbase. The Canadian Standards Association has a Sustainable Forests Standard, the American standard called the Sustainable Forests Initiative, and then the one we’re pursuing which is called the Forest Stewardship Council, or FSC. We’re chosen FSC because we think it more closely aligns with our operating philosophy and how we’ve developed our environmental and aboriginal programs.
FSC is an international standard that has a little bit more knowledge or awareness or acceptance in the marketplace. We think that will help us as we endeavour to assure our customers that we are being good stewards or managing the forest as best as we can.
CC: FSC IS RELATIVELY NEW IN CANADA. WHERE IS MOST OF YOUR PRODUCT GOING THAT THIS WOULD BE OF ANY CONCERN?
BR: FSC has been in existence I believe since 1993. So it’s been around longer than the other standards’ systems, but not that well known in Canada since it was really developed in response to tropical timber harvesting in South America largely. Our product goes to Europe, to North America, largely into the States, and into Asia. Marketplace-wise, Europe is probably the most aware and the most demanding for FSC certified products. The US is picking in that regard and now there is starting to be more activity in Asia. So it varies by the region. But in our case, we’re trying to make sure that we’re well positioned as these markets grow to accept certification and FSC more often. So it’s a strategic move for us to make sure we’re ahead of our competitors and we’re able to get certified and promote that in the marketplace.
CC: GOING FOR THIS CERTIFICATION IS NOT SOMETHING THAT YOU TAKE LIGHTLY OR THAT ENTER INTO OVERNIGHT, BECAUSE IT’S ACTUALLY BEEN FOUR YEARS SETTING THIS UP FROM TIME AL-PAC FIRST DECIDED TO PURSUE THIS AND WHERE YOU ARE TODAY. WHY IS IT SO STRENUOUS? WHY HAS IT TAKEN SO LONG?
BR: The way FSC works is that there is an international set of principles and criteria that are developed. And then those principles and criteria are used at the regional level, in our case the boreal forest, to develop a regional standard. So we made the decision we thought, about four years ago, that FSC was probably the most closely aligned standard and the best in our case to seek. However we needed to wait awhile. The FSC structure needed to be developed more in Canada and then it needed to develop a regional standard. That process took two years and was completed in August of this year where the standard was formally ratified. So anybody in the boreal forest that wants to get certified by FSC now has to use the boreal standard. So our time in getting this was largely waiting and inputting into the standard development process to ensure there was a credible standard that we could be certified against.
CC: WHY DO YOU EVEN HAVE TO SET UP A SEPARATE STANDARD LIKE A BOREAL STANDARD? ISN’T IT SOMETHING YOU CAN JUST USE ACROSS THE BOARD?
BR: Certain standards operate that way. FSC is sort of a different model that says you take the overriding principles and criteria, principles like respect for indigenous rights, respect for workers, forest management planning, environment, those things and then from there are a number of criteria that are still at a fairly broad level.
The expectation from FSC then is that you will take those principles and criteria and make them applicable at the local level. The key component of FSC is its inclusion in that process. So FSC Canada had to demonstrate that everybody that was interested was consulted. That you had a broad consultation process to input into that boreal standard, and in Canada’s case, there were over 2000 responses from people that were sent into the standard. There were I believe three or four drafts of the standard, all that were communicated. There were public meetings. There were series of consultation processes that led to that boreal standard. So it’s intended to be a very inclusive process that builds support for the standard development and therefore for the certification process.
It’s different from how some of the other standards do it, that have a standard that you can use through any forest region in Canada. FSC believes that you need to have regional standards that more accurately reflect the values that are in those regions.
CC: YOU WERE INVOLVED VERY CLOSELY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THIS BOREAL STANDARD. WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES THAT FACE ALBERTA FOR EXAMPLE?
BR: Challenges in Alberta, I think, because we operate on public landbase which means there are other players, other jurisdictions where there’s less activity it becomes easier. So we have issues largely around overlapping tenure or cumulative effects. So how do the activities of other players, other forest operators and the oil and gas sector affect our operations or affect the viability of forest management on this landbase? That’s probably the biggest issue we have to deal with and it’s new for FSC. They’re used to certifying largely private forests that don’t have the level of activity that we do in Alberta in our public forests. So we’re going to test that with the standard being relatively new and that was considered. But it takes a site specific audit to see how it will play out.
We think we have enough evidence and that things happen pretty good in Alberta. The Integrated Landscape Management program of the Alberta Chamber of Resources is a good example whereby energy and forestry are working together to reduce the industrial footprint. And it shows cooperation and it shows how industry is working to do best management practices on the landbase. And we think that will be reflected well through the audit.
CC: ARE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE INDUSTRY WATCHING YOU?
BR: We think so. As you say, this is the first FSC audit in the province. There’s a lot of interest and there’s a lot of sort of misunderstanding FSC because it does have a very strong environmental focus, as to what is expected. So we expect to have a few companies come out as well and observe the audit. And we’ve been communicating with a few. But there are a lot of other companies in their markets as well, so there’s a sensitivity about it. Hopefully we’ll have some more people out here and understand better what it’s trying to do. We think it is a good process and will be beneficial to our company.
CC: THANK YOU VERY MUCH BRENT.
BR: Thank you.
Brent Rabik is Director of Strategic Projects with Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries.
FEATURED LINK: Visit Al-Pac's website
FEATURED LINK: Forest Stewardship Council website
FEATURED LINK: SFMN Study on forest certification programs