Most Estonian wood industry companies, producing furniture and other high added-value goods, use the required FSC certificate for export markets, which is supposed to prove the wood comes from ethically managed forests. This certificate holds the largest market share both in Estonia and globally.

"A significant portion of Estonian wood industry companies are FSC certified, as is all the state forest, which accounts for half of the forest land. And then also private forest lands, over 200,000 hectares, actually, most of Estonia's forest land is FSC certified. The FSC standard is very strong in Europe. One of FSC's major partners, for example, is IKEA, which has confirmed it will always use the FSC standard," said FSC Estonia's executive director, Kristjan Maasalu.

Estonia has been using a temporary FSC standard because there has been no agreement on the wording of a local standard since 2016. Now, Estonia is close to agreeing on the wording for a local standard, while the proposed solution has been deemed unacceptable by the State Forest Management Center (RMK) because it includes a point about considering indigenous peoples. In Estonia, the Setos and Võros have declared themselves indigenous peoples.

"The official position of the Republic of Estonia, expressed through the viewpoint of the minister of culture, is that there are no indigenous peoples in Estonia in the terms of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. So, we cannot support this in any way. We have made it clear that if such a requirement is included in the standard, then RMK will forego its FSC certification, and we have communicated this to our partners," stated RMK board member Kristjan Tõnisson.

RMK cannot say what accepting the indigenous peoples' point would entail in substance.

"I think there isn't currently a debate about what this entails. It's a very principled discussion," Tõnisson acknowledged.

However, RMK does not see the loss of the FSC certificate in Estonia as a major problem because there would be about a year-long transition period. Manufacturers could start using the competing PEFC certificate instead. RMK itself has been using it in parallel with the FSC certificate since 2010.

"Both are global certificates, valid worldwide. For market participants, this means that at some point, they need to review which certificate's products they continue to sell to where," Tõnisson said.

Barrus, a furniture manufacturer in Võrumaa, uses both FSC and PEFC certificates, although 70 percent of their output is covered by the FSC certificate, which has higher requirements.

"On our main markets, predominantly, I mean the Scandinavian markets, FSC is used. To my understanding, FSC has slightly higher requirements than PEFC, but there isn't much of a substantive difference for us," said Barrus CEO Martti Kork.

The final wording of the FSC Estonia certificate could be finalized in May.

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