Criteria for sustainable forest management

Suriname has no national criteria formulated for sustainable forest management. There is a criteria for sustainable forest management so forest management and forest exploitation can be monitored and evaluated.

In 2002, the Minister of Natural Resources approved a working group for national forest certification to be established, which e.g will initiate the formulation of these criteria. In this group,  businesses, the government and CSOs will be working together on the  promotion, development and implementation of forest certification in Suriname. The working group is not active yet.

Several organizations, such as PHS, SBB and WWF-Guianas, have not waited on the joint working group to function, but each are active in establishing effecting changes aimed at sustainable production increase.

National criteria for sustainable forest management should be based on the goals of forest management and the vision on the development of the different forest types. For this purpose, data on the wood stocks, growth and composition of the various forest types is needed. Thus, after a period of time,  composition  of tree types of the forest will be tested to check if this has not  changed.
In many tropical countries, these data are not available and this limits  the criteria for sustainable forest management to mere guidelines and standards for commercial wood types.

In Suriname, CELOS does have the basic data. The Surinamese timber industry intends to take all elements of sustainable forest management from (silviculture expert) the  CELOS Management System for further development.