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SmartWood Certification and Verification

As the world's leading Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) forest management certifier, SmartWood sets the international gold standard for credibility in auditing environmentally and socially responsible forestry. Find out why forestry operations choose SmartWood as their certifier.

The Rainforest Alliance's SmartWood program offers a diverse set of certification and verification services. While each of these services has a different focus -- ranging from Forest Stewardship Council certification, to verification of legality, to the management of high conservation value forests -- they all benefit from the rigor and expertise of the SmartWood team. Read profiles of some of our clients.

		SmartWood's Global Reach
			Forest Area Certified	138,695,923 acres 56,128,249 hectares
			Operations	3,186
			Countries	65

In addition to its FSC certification activities, SmartWood provides a variety of complementary verification services.

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certification

Learn about FSC Forest Management, Chain-of-Custody, Controlled Wood and Non-Timber Forest Product certification. Download FSC standards and summary reports of certified operations.

SmartStep Phased Approach to FSC Certification

SmartStep helps companies identify and address gaps in their forest practices using a step-by-step approach that leads to FSC certification.

Legality and High Conservation Value Forest Verification

SmartWood auditors can verify the legality of forest products and help identify and manage forests of high cultural and biological significance.

Forest Carbon Validation and Verification

Healthy Forests Mean Healthy Profits
How one Indonesian community is leading the way.

Third-party, independent validation and verification is crucial to assuring investors and carbon offset buyers that the following types of activities will deliver carbon sequestration and/or mitigation:

• Reforestation (planting trees in areas that have been recently burned or logged);
• Afforestation (planting trees in areas that have been severely degraded for many years or were converted to other uses, such as agriculture, many years ago);
• Avoided deforestation or degradation (preventing deforestation or forest degradation that, without extra income from carbon credits, would otherwise be inevitable); and
• Improved forest management (reducing the impact of logging, increasing forest protection, etc.).

Learn more about the Rainforest Alliance's validation, verification, assessment and other services for forest carbon project proponents.

SmartLogging

SmartLogging is a rigorous, third-party, field performance-based audit and certification system for individuals and groups of loggers represented by loggers' associations, master logger programs and forest products companies.

Generic Chain-of-Custody

The Generic Chain-of-Custody (G/CoC) service is for companies that would like to be certified or verified for the purchasing, handling, processing, and/or selling of products which may have claims regarding origin or certification/verification schemes. Companies successfully evaluated by SmartWood against the G/CoC standard receive an independent verification that the company has systems in place to ensure claims regarding products sold correspond with claims for purchased raw material (inputs).

List of active Rainforest Alliance G/CoC clients.

Rediscovered Wood

For operations that purchase and sell reclaimed, recycled and/or salvaged wood products.

Custom Verification Services

Our third-party independent verification services can be tailored to fit a company's procurement policies and projects. Companies employ our services to ensure their projects are implemented as planned or that internal standards are followed. Minimum standards exist to which custom verification services must comply. Please contact us for additional information.