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Chile is the first country in South America to commit to Zero Deforestation for sustainable forest management

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PEFC is the international non-profit forest certification system of European origin that has proposed new requirements for sustainable forest management and its derived products, in line with the European Union's Zero Deforestation regulation for the commercialization of forest-based products.

Chile has a national forest certification system recognized 21 years ago by PEFC, which has focused on applying the new European requirements to the national standard and thus leading the way toward zero deforestation.

"Although forest certification in Chile has regulated no deforestation and no forest degradation since 2000, this adjustment to the national standard explicitly prohibits deforestation and adds new verification criteria to prevent forest conversion for other land uses and the replacement of native forests with plantations from December 31, 2010, onward," says André Laroze, CEO of PEFC Chile.

Currently, the country has 1.1 million hectares of PEFC-certified planted forests. According to Laroze, "the certification includes nine principles of sustainable management, regulating relations with forestry workers, local communities, indigenous peoples, forest and high-value area conservation, biodiversity protection, soil and water, compliance with laws and treaties, and forest resource protection, including fire prevention."

The executive adds that the main verification measure for compliance with this standard is third-party auditing, but particularly, "for zero deforestation, a digital record in a geolocation system is required to identify certified properties where the timber entering the market is harvested. This measure also facilitates the control of legal timber trade."

At the technical level of the standard, the recently approved version includes new terms and definitions aligned with the European Union's "Zero Deforestation" roadmap, especially for understanding different types of forests, such as planted forests.

It is worth clarifying that this regulation is voluntary, and therefore, the guarantee of zero deforestation will be an attribute that only certified companies and forest owners can demonstrate. "It is highly relevant to increase access to certification for small and medium-sized forest owners with commercial operations, both for Chile and for Europe and other destinations," concludes Laroze.