We Can’t See the Forest for the Trees: The Environmental Impact of Global Forest Certification Is Unknown

The role of private instruments such as certification systems in global environmental governance is continuously expanding. Therefore it is becoming increasingly important to know the environmental impact of these schemes. However, the sustainability impact of forest certification standards is largely unknown. Although much academic and policy-oriented research has been done, most analyses are desk studies – a paper reality has been created. Therefore we propose a global multi-disciplinary assessment to evaluate the environmental, social and economic impacts of sustainability certification.