Challenges for FSC Forest Certification: Audits in the Context of Pandemic COVID-19

• Main Authors: Adelin-Ionuț Nicorescu, Aureliu-Florin Hălălișan, Bogdan Popa, Nikolay Neykov
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-07-01
• Series: Forests
• Subjects: audit; COVID-19; FSC certification; Romania; companies
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/12/8/997

The COVID-19 pandemic caused economic difficulties for companies in forestry as well as significant issues for entities dealing with Chain of Custody (CoC) certification. Global certification schemes, like FSC and PEFC, based on some preventive provisions in their procedural frame, developed new approaches and derogations to maintain quality evaluation and the power of standards. Arising from COVID-19 restrictions, postponed audits (and the extension of the validity of existing certifications) or remote auditing became increasingly common. Based on a survey applied to companies that had CoC FSC audits in 2020, this study aimed at evaluating the perceptions of companies regarding the audits performed under COVID pandemic procedural derogations, along with other research objectives like the continuous investigation of certification drivers or advantages. Companies indicated that the certification bodies explained the characteristics of pandemic-adapted audits and conducted risk assessments before choosing the adapted approach. Almost half of the companies perceived significant differences between the on-site previous audits and the audits performed during the pandemic due to the imposed restrictions and adapted approaches. Additionally, companies found that hybrid or remote audits are not so efficient, and for the future on-site audits are preferred. The study concluded that making the auditing procedures less interactional is not yet a sufficiently mature approach; there is a clear need for better procedures, building online tools usage capacity, to better communicate the specificity of such procedures better, and to better balance the online evaluations with on-site assessments.