'The Living Forests' process - the perspective of forest owners

The Living Forests project and process successfully completed a consensus among 13 stakeholders on 23 performance level standards for sustainable forest management in Norway 'the Living Forests Standards' on 27 March, 1998. This was the main outcome of a thorough and comprehensive development project and process, where all relevant stakeholders, including forest owners, forest industries, the government, the trade unions, the consumers, recreational-, women- and environmental organisations participated. Today almost 90% of the wood supply from the Norwegian forests comes from suppliers with ISO 14001 certification combined with the Living Forests Standards. This combination was endorsed by the Pan European Forest Certification (PEFC) in May, 2000. No other business sector has run a similar process, inviting all relevant stakeholders to join a process to agree on how the sector should be managed to help achieving sustainability, and committing itself to implement the agreed recommendations.