For me, 2014 was a year of great achievements. Having celebrated our 20th anniversary, attended my first General Assembly and grown our footprint considerably, we’ve certainly come a long way since our establishment in 1994. We’re not teenagers anymore.
And while we continue to face many challenges, it’s clear we’ve taken some bold steps forward. It was a difficult choice, but here are my highlights from last year…
Since FSC’s beginning, we’ve been unable to deliver to our full potential for natural forests in the Tropics. The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical forest by far, and it is located in Latin America; the tropical region where we have most members and national offices. Yet, our operations there are very poorly funded. This is because the main source of FSC’s income is certificate holders’ fees, and apart from Brazil and Chile, I think we have too few FSC management certificates and chain of custody certificates in the Latin America region.
So there are areas across Latin America – including the Amazon – where, unfortunately, we haven’t reached the level of success that we have achieved in many other regions, such as Europe, Russia or North America.
This is something that has increasingly concerned us: how can we remedy this situation?
And I’m pleased to say that at the Latin American regional meeting in November 2014 in Argentina, I sensed a great level of creative energy to find a new way forward. Not only did we define what the most important focus areas are, we also looked at how we can work on them together through the national and regional offices and FSC International.
Most of all, we recognise that we need to strengthen local and national markets in Latin America, and to do that we must strengthen the credibility of FSC in the region. We must also work more closely with local smallholders and communities to secure certification that is relevant to them.
At FSC, we have a team of people who are responsible for the development of the FSC global network. We call them the Network Unit. For a couple of years, they have worked hard to find ways to strengthen the global organisation – getting the right resources in the right places.
Through this team’s work, together with our offices around the world, we are now much closer to providing network partners with the resources they need. We’ve also become much clearer in defining who should be delivering what services. And we’ve set in motion processes that will develop this work even further in 2015 onwards.
As part of this effort, this group are also helping us to build capacity in places we haven’t been before: from strengthening our presence in China and Indonesia to launching a new FSC organisation in Malaysia and new representatives in Mexico and Argentina.
These achievements, and many others, are taking us one step closer to becoming a much more consistent, global organisation. I’m sure that the new strategic plan we’re working on will move us even quicker in that direction, and I’m certain that I speak on behalf of all of FSC when I say I’m excited for the many new adventures 2015 is already bringing.