Forest certification consultation workshop is going on in Jimma with stakeholders of forest management in southwestern Ethiopia.
The technical working group for the development of the FSC Interim National Standard of forest stewardship for Ethiopia is discussing with stakeholders to have insights and include feedbacks from participants.
Foreign experts from the working group have presented the procedures of forest certification and their approach to the current forest certifying process in Southwestern Ethiopia. Discussions on the presentations followed and presenters clarified the questions from participants. One of the presenters Severinus Jembe, Soil association certification – Africa manager has expressed the objectives and benefits of getting a national standard and certified forests. He mentioned the experience of some other countries in Africa and the positive consequences from being certified like improved access of international markets for NTFPs.
The other presenter who works as a standard development senior expert and consulting for Soil association of UK, Vanessa Linforth, explained about the roles expected from stakeholders and the technical group to meet the planned interim national standard.
The experts mentioned Ethiopia’s rich forest potential and NTFPs which could be boosted by this by the support of getting a national standard.
The discussion was continued in the afternoon session by forming four groups based on different topics of forest elements. Each group is expected to come up with a certain conclusions of the topics after their discussion to be presented for all participants in order to reach a particular consensus.
The workshop will also continue until tomorrow for second day discussion.
