MTCC conducted a webinar to introduce the Malaysian Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management or in short, the MC&I SFM to its various stakeholders on July 21. About 140 participants from government agencies, social and environmental interest groups, industry, certification bodies, academic institutions as well as students from the Peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak participated in this three-hour webinar.
In his welcoming remarks, MTCC CEO, Yong Teng Koon said the MC&I SFM is the outcome of an extensive standard review process which took place from 2015 to 2019.
“The MC&I SFM is the revised certification standard that has incorporated the requirements for sustainable management of both natural forest and forest plantation under the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS). This 2-in-1 standard replaces the MC&I(Natural Forest) and MC&I Forest Plantation v.2 standards. As a scheme endorsed by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), the standard also incorporates relevant PEFC benchmarks for sustainable forest management,” he added.
Yong also took the opportunity to highlight the MTCC’s new vision and mission and MTCC Strategy 2020-2025 that were adopted in 2019 in conjunction with its 20th anniversary, and presented an update on the implementation of the MTCS.
“As of July 15, a total of 4.986 million ha of forests have been certified under the MTCS, comprising 20 Forest Management Units (FMUs) covering 4.881 million ha of natural forest and seven Forest Plantation Management Units (FPMUs) covering 105,364 ha of forest plantations. The number of companies issued with the PEFC CoC Certificate stands at 381,” he said.
In her presentation on the requirements of MC&I SFM, Senior Manager (Forest Management), Siti Syaliza Mustapha said the revised standard includes nine principles, 49 criteria, and 99 indicators for natural forest (NF) and 105 indicators for forest plantation (FP).
She highlighted the key changes to the standard and emphasised on the inclusion of new requirements related to the conversion of severely degraded forest to forest plantation, afforestation of ecological important non-forest ecosystem, interpretation for internal audit and management review, the need for continual improvement and interpretation on requirements for communicating claims from certified area.
The webinar recording and photos can be downloaded from the link below:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1401yk9m9CAtMmZDkaEcqIQp2RaGmjZGG?usp=sharing