Highlights of FSC’s Remedy Framework

As the world’s most trusted provider of forest management solutions, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is heavily invested in working with businesses to empower them to remedy social and environmental harm caused in the past.

FSC’s commitment to promoting restoration through social and environmental remedy is demonstrated by the new Remedy Framework. This framework is a set of rules and requirements in the form of standardized criteria against which the remediation and restorative activities of non-conforming companies will be assessed. The Remedy Framework merges the provisions of FSC’s Conversion Remedy Procedure and Policy for Association Remediation Framework, while ensuring alignment with other relevant policies and procedures of the FSC certification system, especially FSC’s Policy to Address Conversion and Policy for Association. 

FSC is the only responsible forest management and forest product certification system requiring non-conforming companies to remedy past conversion and address other environmental and social harms, in a fair and proportionate manner.  

The Remedy Framework will apply to: 

i. Disassociated companies: This framework will enable FSC to develop roadmaps for potentially ending disassociation with companies who have violated the requirements of the Policy for Association in a replicable and consistent manner. 

ii. Companies with a legacy of past conversion that wish to enter the FSC system: This framework will establish the criteria and remedial actions that such companies will be required to fulfil. By doing so they will become eligible to apply for FSC’s forest management certification.  

Expected outcomes of the FSC Remedy Framework:  

• Develop roadmaps that are fair and ensure proportionate remedy of harm. 
• Improve the integrity of the FSC certification scheme. 
• Have a standardized framework as the foundation for company-specific roadmaps for potentially ending disassociation, remedy, and addressing conversion since 1994.  
• Set clear and measurable conditions in roadmap processes for potentially ending disassociation.   

FSC strongly believes that implementation of the Remedy Framework will ensure access to remedy – both environmental and social – for past harms in a proportionate and holistic manner. As a result, FSC will be able to drive actions that yield significant positive outcomes that benefit the world’s forests and the people that depend on them.  

The draft Remedy Framework will be open for public consultation from 24 February to 24 April, 2022, and it will subsequently be revised based on stakeholder comments received during the consultation. We plan to present the final version of Remedy Framework to the FSC International Board of Directors in August 2022 for their approval. Subject to receiving the Board’s approval, we will present it at the FSC General Assembly in October 2022. 

All updates about this process are available here.