ESA Satellites May Augment FSC Certification Schemes

The European Space Agency (ESA) may dedicate some of the orbital capabilites aboard its satellites for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification schemes aimed at promoting responsible forestry.

This issue was discussed recently at the general assembly of the FSC, which was held in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. The end goal of the collaboration would be to ensure transparency when it comes to exploiting forests in a sustainable manner.

There is currently an ever-increasing demand of pulp, paper and timber products on the international market, and more and more forests are being threatened by illegal loggers and associated industries.

The FSC is taking active steps to ensure that the world's forests are not exploited beyond their ability to regenerate. Its logo guarantees that the wood originates from responsibly managed forests, which allows the consumer to be directly involved in combating global deforestation.

“Earth observation has the potential to increase the quality of the FSC certification, to reduce the costs of certification and can deliver additional benefits,” explains the FSC director for Standards and Policy, Hans Joachim Droste.

“Due to the results of the project we want to further develop this technology within the FSC system,” he goes on to say. At the recent meeting, the ESA project team discussed this issue with more than 400 stakeholders from around the world.

FSC is made up of forest owners, timber industries, social groups and environmental organizations, that work together on the international stage to ensure that forests are managed and exploited within reasonable, sustainable limits.

ESA has been working with the organization for many years, attempting to validate the datasets its satellites collected from all over the world. “This technology has the unique capability to increase transparency and efficiency in forest certification,” FSC Executive Director Andre de Freitas says.

“At the meeting in Malaysia, three Earth observation service trials designed for the needs of FSC certificate holders, certification bodies and the FSC itself were presented,” an ESA press release says.

“The satellite maps demonstrated the value of the approach in three different forest operations: large temperate forest plantations in South Africa, boreal natural mega forestry concessions in Russia and smallholder temperate forestry in Sweden,” the document adds.