Founding member warns FSC label cannot be trusted
San Francisco — Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has resigned from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), ending more than 30 years of membership in the world’s most widely recognized forestry certification system. RAN says the FSC’s certification label is failing to provide credible assurances of responsible forest management.
RAN was a founding member of FSC in 1993 and remained engaged for decades because of the need for a robust third party verified forestry certification scheme. The FSC previously set the gold standard for responsible forestry in a market flooded by timber and paper products bearing logos of weaker forest certification schemes such as the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification. But the organization says recent decisions by the FSC have fatally undermined its credibility.
“The FSC was created to promote and credibly verify responsible forest management,” said Robin Averbeck, Forest Program Director at Rainforest Action Network. “Instead, the system is now weakening its own standards, tolerating fraud, and allowing logging in some of the world’s last intact forests. At this point, consumers, companies, financiers, and governments simply cannot rely on the FSC label as a guarantee of responsible forest management.”
RAN’s decision follows a series of actions by the FSC that the organization says represent a clear break from its original mission. Most recently, at FSC’s 2025 General Assembly in Panama, members voted down proposals to strengthen oversight of remedy processes in Indonesia—mechanisms meant to address unresolved land conflicts and human rights abuses involving two of the country’s largest forestry conglomerates, Royal Golden Eagle Group and Sinar Mas Group.
“The credibility of the FSC system took a decisive blow when its members rejected stronger oversight of remedy processes that are supposed to address serious harm,” Averbeck said. “This comes amidst ongoing violence and intimidation of affected communities, conflicts of interest, and systemic failures to uphold Indigenous Peoples’ right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent.”
RAN also points to broader, well-documented failures across the FSC system:
- Rampant fraud: Investigations have shown fraudulent FSC certificates circulating widely in key markets, including China, Europe, and the United States. Despite long-standing awareness of these problems, FSC has failed to establish basic safeguards such as robust traceability to source and effective volume controls for certified wood.
- Weakened standards: In 2022, FSC reversed a cornerstone rule that prohibited full certification of lands deforested or converted from natural ecosystems after 1994—one of the standards that had distinguished FSC from weaker certification schemes.
- Opening intact forests to logging: At its 2025 General Assembly, FSC members voted to remove critical protections for Intact Forest Landscapes in the Amazon, Congo Basin, and Indonesia, exposing some of the planet’s last large forest frontiers to industrial logging.
- Failure to protect Indigenous Peoples: Members also rejected proposals aimed at safeguarding the rights of Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and moved further toward enabling carbon offsetting within the FSC system.
“Walking away from the FSC is not a decision we take lightly,” Averbeck said. “But ongoing participation would continue legitimizing a system that is failing forests and the people who depend on them. Until the FSC restores strong standards and real accountability, its logo should not be treated as a mark of responsible forestry by companies, financiers, governments or consumers.”
###
____
Background for journalists
For five years, Rainforest Action Network alongside a number of international NGOs and civil society organizations have appealed to the FSC to take actions to rebuild trust in the system following a series of questionable decisions made by the FSC–– and its former Director General––regarding Indonesian forestry companies disassociated from the FSC due to deforestation and human rights violations. Despite years of engagement, the FSC has failed to take the steps needed to rebuild confidence. Now, the FSC risks allowing Royal Golden Eagle group and Sinar Mas Group to re-enter the system and sell products bearing the FSC logo without ensuring effective remedy of the egregious social and environmental harms they inflicted on Indonesia’s rainforests and Indigenous and local communities.
See recent relevant media:
https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/fsc-to-vote-on-new-traceability-rules-amid-fraud-allegations/