It’s easy to become a victim of your own success. Here at the Forest Stewardship Council, it’s something we’re constantly conscious of: how can we ensure our success grows?
In my last blog, I spoke about how FSC began: filling the gap left wide open by governments and creating a common sense of direction.
Today, FSC enjoys great success. Some 8.6% of the world’s productive forests area – almost 185 million hectares – is FSC certified.
But success is a funny thing. For with great results come great responsibility – and being a success bestows obligation on FSC. The obligation to make sure that certification still works for people and forests, that we protect our credibility, and are active where our markets and consumers are; that we speak in the languages they speak, and talk about the topics they care about.
Now that FSC has achieved so much, we have a level of credibility to maintain, if not exceed. Our certification is a documentable accreditation for forests and, as a result, we need a robust system to handle disputes and complaints, so that we, and our members, can live up to the high mark FSC has set.
We need to move beyond an organisation that is strong at its centre but doesn’t have sufficient representation in all the places it needs to. For instance, we have good representation in Europe and North America, but in Asia, Africa and Latin America we need to get stronger.
Developing countries also present an opportunity and a future path for FSC.
These enormous markets, with billions of people, are growing at an exponential rate.
Indeed, the people of Latin America, Asia and Africa will become consumers in ways they have never been consumers before. And as this occurs across these markets, sustainability – an issue that sits at the heart of FSC – must have an increasingly important role to play.
While there will be many challenges ahead in our next twenty years, there is also ample opportunity for us to expand into developing markets and grow the FSC name.
Perhaps then we can become the champions of our own success.