National Forest Certification Committee

The National Forest Certification Committee (NFCC) was an expert body established by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), Government of India, to design a framework for the certification of forests and forest products within the country. It represented a significant step towards creating a national mechanism to ensure that forest management practices in India were both sustainable and internationally recognised.

Background and Rationale

By the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, global attention to deforestation, illegal logging, and unsustainable exploitation of forest resources had intensified. Internationally, the concept of forest certification emerged as a tool to promote environmentally responsible, socially beneficial, and economically viable forest management. It served as a market-driven assurance system that verified whether timber and other forest products originated from sustainably managed sources.
In India, although a considerable portion of land was under forest cover, only a small percentage of forests were certified under global schemes. The increasing global demand for certified products, particularly in export markets, encouraged the government to establish a domestic certification mechanism suited to Indian ecological and socio-economic conditions. This led to the formation of the National Forest Certification Committee to formulate relevant policies and standards.

Constitution and Working

The NFCC was constituted by merging earlier committees that had been separately tasked with framing certification criteria, accreditation procedures, and management standards. Its work began around 2008, and the committee submitted its report in 2010. Professor Maharaj Muthoo served as the chairperson.
The committee was entrusted with:

• Developing criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management certification covering both timber and non-timber forest products.
• Outlining a certification process and procedures for forests under various management systems.
• Designing an accreditation mechanism for certification bodies authorised to verify compliance.
• Ensuring that India’s certification framework was harmonised with international best practices while reflecting local realities such as community rights and forest diversity.

Key Recommendations

The NFCC made several significant recommendations to operationalise forest certification in India:

• Establishment of an independent institution, the Indian Forest Certification Council (IFCC), to oversee and coordinate certification systems.
• Adoption of criteria and indicators aligned with the principles of sustainable forest management, encompassing ecological stability, social responsibility, and economic viability.
• Introduction of chain-of-custody certification to track the movement of certified forest products from the forest to the final consumer, ensuring authenticity and traceability.
• Development of a national framework recognising the role of community forests, smallholders, and non-timber forest products, ensuring that certification was inclusive and adaptable.
• Promotion of market linkages for certified forest products to improve their commercial viability in both domestic and international markets.

Significance

The formation of the NFCC reflected India’s official recognition of forest certification as an important policy instrument for sustainable forest management (SFM). It aimed to integrate environmental conservation with economic incentives, linking forest-dependent communities and industries to global markets that demanded certified products.
The NFCC also contributed to the evolution of institutional thinking in India’s forestry sector, shifting emphasis from purely conservation-based policies to market-compatible sustainability mechanisms. The committee’s recommendations laid the groundwork for the subsequent development of a national certification system.

Challenges and Limitations

While the NFCC successfully prepared a comprehensive framework, implementation encountered several challenges:

• Delayed adoption of recommendations and slow institutional follow-up limited the momentum of certification.
• Diverse forest ownership patterns and management regimes across states made uniform certification criteria difficult to apply.
• Limited financial incentives and low domestic demand for certified products affected the enthusiasm of stakeholders.
• Institutional fragmentation and lack of continuous monitoring slowed progress in establishing a robust certification network.

Despite these issues, the NFCC’s work served as a foundation for further reforms in the forest governance sector.

Evolution and Current Developments

Following the NFCC’s recommendations, India continued to refine its forest certification mechanisms. The Network for Certification and Conservation of Forests (NCCF) was later established as a non-profit organisation to carry forward the work initiated by the NFCC. The NCCF developed a national forest certification standard, which received international endorsement under the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) in 2019.
More recently, in 2023, the Government of India launched the Indian Forest and Wood Certification Scheme, a voluntary third-party certification framework that includes components such as forest management certification, trees outside forests certification, and chain-of-custody certification. This marked the realisation of many of the principles envisioned by the NFCC.

Importance for Policy and Environmental Governance

The work of the NFCC holds enduring relevance in India’s environmental policy landscape. It illustrates how market-based instruments can complement regulatory mechanisms in promoting sustainable resource use. The NFCC’s initiatives contributed to:

• Strengthening accountability and transparency in forest management.
• Enhancing market access for certified forest products.
• Supporting India’s commitments to sustainable development goals (SDGs) and global climate action frameworks.
• Encouraging stakeholder participation by involving local communities, forest departments, and private sector actors.