fold faq If I have a complaint about an FSC certificate, what should I do and who should I speak to?
FSC has an official Complaints and Disputes Procedure which is designed to help stakeholders make their concerns known and to find the best way of resolving complaints. This can be resolved on different levels within the FSC system and we encourage people to take a stepwise approach and hope that most complaints can be resolved in this way. FSC developed a fact sheet that explains this procedure very well. This procedure is currently being revised to improve its application. If a stakeholder, for example an environmental NGO, is concerned about how a certified forest or a forest in the process of certification is managed, they should contact the forest manager, the certification body and/or the FSC National Initiative. They should explain their concerns, listen to the explanation and try to come to a solution. This is often the fastest and easiest way to solve a problem. If a certificate holder is not fully compliant, they are required to make the prescribed changes within a given time
