Revision of Requirements for the Development and Maintainance of FSC Country Requirements (FSS and FSC RAs)

1. FSC-STD-60-006 V1-2 Process Requirements for the development and maintenance of National Forest Stewardship Standards;

2. FSC STD-60-002 V1-0 Structure and Content of National Forest Stewardship Standards;

3. FSC-PRO-60-006 V2-0 Development and Transfer of National Forest Stewardship Standards to the FSC Principles and Criteria Version 5-1, and

4. FSC-PRO-60-007 V1-2 Structure, Content and Development of Interim National Standards

5. FSC-PRO-60-002 V3-0 The Development and Approval of FSC® National Risk Assessments. 

The period of validity for all five documents has expired. Several factors and processes drive the revision of these requirements, including FSC Global Strategy and the current requirements for the revision of normative documents. The FSC Global Strategy requires outcome orientation, streamlining and data driven approach to be incorporated in the requirements for Forest Stewardship Standards (FSS) development. Additionally, in the regular review process the Policy and Performance Unit (P&P), the Forest Management Community (FMC) and other stakeholders have found around 53 specific issues to be revised, e.g. inconsistency, redundancy and lack of clarity in the requirements for FSS.

During preparation for the revision process, P&P team has further identified the opportunity to merge process requirements for the development and maintenance of FSS with process requirements for the development and maintenance of FSC Risk Assessments (the content requirements for FSC RAs are included in the FSC-PRO-60-006b, which was published on 1 July 2024). P&P presented the concept and results of a feasibility exercise to the Policy Steering Group (PSG), which supported merger of process requirements for developing and maintaining FSC FSS with the requirements under procedure FSC-PRO-60-002 for FSC RAs. As a result, since 2023, the revision process includes FSC-PRO-60-002 requirements in its scope.

In their 101th meeting in March 2025, the BoD has provided the mandate to FSC Secretariat to explore as part of the revision process, the inclusion of risk-based approaches as per FSC-PRO-60-010 and the use of FSC Risk Assessments to streamline FSS towards outcome orientation. Taking into consideration the potential impacts that the above mandate can have on FM certification and its strategic implications, the BoD decided the following deviations from the ongoing revision:

1. the Working Group is being expanded to add a chamber-balanced sub-group formed by 3 FSC members with the mandate limited to providing inputs and achieving consensus on streamlining towards outcome orientation; and
2. the BoD will be the decision-making body.

The objectives of the revision process are to:

1. improve the quality of the FSC Country Requirements, their relevance, understandability, completeness, simplicity, user-friendliness and consistency with other applicable requirements within the FSC normative framework;
2. incorporate outcome orientation (including monitoring and evaluation as well as data requirement) in FSC Country Requirements processes; and
3. increase the efficiency, quality, and reliability of the processes for the development and maintenance of FSC Country Requirements.

Nicolás Mesía Rojas, country_requirements@fsc.org

• Fernanda Rodrigues, Brazilian Forests Dialogue 
• Aidas Pivoriūnas, FSC Lithuania
• Yadid Ordoñez, FSC Latin America 
• Owen Davies, Independent Consultant

Subgroup for streamlining Forest Stewardship Standards

• FSC environmental chamber member N.N.
• FSC social chamber member N.N.
• FSC economic chamber member N.N. 

Revision of FSC Risk Assessment Framework Procedure FSC-PRO-60-002b. Learn more below:

You can stay informed of the developments on this revision process by staying tuned to this process page and by participating in consultations and webinars. 

Register here to stay informed and participate in the revision process.