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An initiative of
 
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Glossary of commonly used terms
Community Forest - TFT works directly with community enterprises towards achieving Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. We use the term ‘Community Forest' to refer to agroforests managed privately by smallholder farmers, natural forest concessions managed by communities and commercial forest concessions managed through company-community collaboration. Our community forest projects usually require a larger focus on community organizing, organizational capacity building, small business management and market linkage, with a smaller focus on forest management. In most cases, the communities we work with have already been managing their forests sustainably for multiple generations, but due to legal and market obstacles, have never been able to receive a fair price for their wood.
EIA – Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) - is a tool used to identify the environmental, social and economic impacts of a project prior to decision-making. It aims to predict environmental impacts at an early stage in project planning and design, find ways and means to reduce adverse impacts, shape projects to suit the local environment and present the predictions and options to decision-makers. By using EIA both environmental and economic benefits can be achieved, such as reduced cost and time of project implementation and design, avoided treatment/clean-up costs and impacts of laws and regulations. The key elements of an EIA are (a) Scoping: identify key issues and concerns of interested parties; (b) Screening: decide whether an EIA is required based on information collected; (c) Identifying and evaluating alternatives: list alternative sites and techniques and the impacts of each; (d) Mitigating measures dealing with uncertainty: review proposed action to prevent or minimise the potential adverse effects of the project; and (e) Issuing environmental statements: report the findings of the EIA. www.UNEP.org
Forest concession – A specified forest area under the management of a given entity.
Forest dependent communities - Forests cover 12% of the planet and nearly all are inhabited. Many of the peoples who live in and have customary rights to their forests have developed ways of life and traditional knowledge that are attuned to their forest environments. Yet forest policies commonly treat forests as empty lands controlled by the State and available for 'development' - colonisation, logging, plantations, dams, mines, oil wells, gas pipelines and agribusiness.These encroachments often force forest peoples out of their forest homes. Some conservation schemes to establish wilderness reserves also deny forest-dwellers' rights. Cut off from their ancestral territories, forest peoples face poverty, the erosion of their customary institutions, loss of identity and cultural collapse. www.forestpeoples.org
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international non profit organisation founded in 1993 to support environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests. The emphasis of the 10 FSC Principles and Criteria is on minimising the negative impacts of all forestry operations on the environment, maximising social benefits and maintaining the important conservation values of the forest. FSC is the current Gold Standard for forest management. www.fsc.org
High Conservation Value Forests- are those areas of forest that need to be appropriately managed in order to maintain or enhance the identified High Conservation Values. A High Conservation Value Forest may be a small part of a larger forest, for example a riparian zone protecting a stream that is the sole supply of drinking water to a community or a small patch of a rare ecosystem. In other cases, the High Conservation Value Forest may be the whole of a forest management unit, for example when the forest contains several threatened or endangered species that range throughout the forest. www.proforest.net
Reduced Impact Logging - Reduced Impact Logging places focus on minimizing the environmental degradation that can occur during logging operations. Through careful forest planning, preparation, refined harvesting techniques and high standards to safety, the implementation of RIL can lead to an increase in social, environmental and economic benefits when compared to conventional logging practices. As such, RIL is an important component for moving towards Sustainable Forest Management. RIL is a systematic approach to planning, implementating, monitoring and evaluating forest harvesting.
Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) - forestry’s contribution to sustainable development – defined as the best available practices, based on current scientific and traditional knowledge which allow multiple objectives (conservation of Fauna and Flora and poverty alleviation) and needs to be met without degrading the forest resource.
The Forest Trust (TFT)- Established in 1999, the TFT works to conserve threatened tropical forests through sustainable management. TFT does one thing better than any other organization in the world—it brings Forest Responsible Products to market. TFT works worldwide, and at every level of supply chains that go back to forests, to assure the availability and profitability of products that do not devastate forests, destroy biodiversity or harm indigenous peoples and local communities.
Our mission is urgent: Twenty percent of the world’s carbon emissions, the main contributor to global warming, are caused by tropical deforestation. Our method is effective: We’ve bought Forest Responsible Products to market by pioneering the introduction of forest responsible management practices into some of the world’s most remote tropical forests. We developed unrivalled competence in tracing and verifying the provenance of wood and wood products. And we created communications campaigns to reinforce responsible forest practices with public recognition.
If you can not find the answer to your question then please email us at info@tft-forests.org.
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