A thematic review of forest certification publications from 2017 to 2021: analysis of pattern and trends for future studies

Abstract

Forest certification was introduced in the late 1980s as a countermeasure to address the deforestation and forest degradation issues which caused major concern among environmental activists. Forest certification was promoted as a voluntary tool to ensure that only timber and timber products from sustainably managed forests were marketed. Although much literature has been published on forest certification since its introduction, not many review papers are available that discuss various contexts of forest certification studies. This review was motivated by the stand that the forest certification system must be strengthened to enhance its contribution to sustainable forest management. Therefore, this review aims to synthesise the discussions on sustainable forest certification published in academic literature from 2017 to July 2021 and to identify potential future areas of study. The paper explores the forest certification debate through an extensive literature review by adopting a thematic review approach. The ATLAS.ti 8 tool was used to facilitate the thematic analysis of forest certification literature dating from 2017 to 2021. A thematic review of 70 articles identified 135 initial codes describing the context of forest certification studies. These were grouped into three main clusters: enabling conditions, execution and evaluation. The review revealed that most studies were conducted to investigate issues relating to the implementation and impact of forest certification, while a limited number of studies were conducted on the enabling conditions of effective forest certification implementation. The review contributes to the existing findings on current forest certification literature and can be used as a guideline to identify future areas of forest certification studies. It is proposed that future research should examine how to design effective forest certification planning and management to maximise its potential contribution to sustainable forest management.