The FSC Performance and Standards Unit (PSU) is pleased to announce the publication of the FSC National Forest Stewardship Standard (NFSS) of the Republic of Uganda: FSC-STD-UGA-01-2017 All forest types and scales EN. The Ugandan NFSS was approved by the FSC Board’s Policy and Standards Committee (PSC) on 27 April 2017 on the basis that certain conditions were to be addressed by the Standard Development Group (SDG) before PSU would assign an effective date.
The Ugandan SDG has now successfully addressed all conditions to the satisfaction of the Chief Policy Officer of PSU. The NFSS of Uganda will become effective on 1 September 2018.
CBs operating in the Republic of Uganda are required to inform all their clients about the new standard immediately. All new assessments have to be conducted against the new standard as of the effective date. Existing certificate holders will need to be audited against the new standard within 12 months of the effective date of the new standard to retain their certification status – any certificates based on the old standard will be considered expired by FSC as of 1 March 2020.
Where major corrective action requests (CARs) are issued as a result of a non-conformance with a new requirement, the client may be granted an extension of up to six (6) months to close them. New requirements are those elements that are entirely new to the standard rather than a rewording of previous requirements.
The PSU would like to take this opportunity to join with the PSC in congratulating the Ugandan SDG for their hard work to successfully complete a NFSS development process in accordance with the revised Principles and Criteria (P&C V5) and related documents.
To view or download the Ugandan NFSS from the Forest Stewardship Standards Document Centre, kindly click here.
To sign up to receive FSC’s bi-weekly newsletter, where news alerts of NFSS are published, please sign up using this link:https://ic.fsc.org/en/newsletter
*This information is shared on behalf of FSC International.
Please note that as of 16 March 2018, the address of FSC IC HAS CHANGED, the new address is: FSC International Center GmbH, Adenauerallee 134, 53113 Bonn, Germany.