Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, forest certification based on third-party external audits has gained momentum. This type of certification was developed as a monitoring tool aimed at improving governance in corporate environmental management and differentiating products in increasingly environmentally sensitive markets. Forest certification has become a strategic instrument for business, particularly for entities that sell their certified products in environmentally sensitive markets.

The specific requirements of the two major systems, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or the Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), aim to continuously improve forest management and involve all relevant stakeholders. These schemes focus on compliance with national and international legislation or good practice, the clarification of ownership issues, preserving and enhancing conservation attributes, increasing the safety of forest-specific activities, and ensuring optimal work conditions and transparency. Certification is intended to support the development of best practice in forest management, which represents a challenge for forest land managers and forest companies. Forest managers face challenges in the implementation of forest certification and related policies, from theoretical aspects (procedures, audits, standards, criteria and indicators, etc.) to practice (healthy and safety issue, stakeholders’ involvement, high-conservation-value forests, pesticide management, feeling techniques and harvesting conditions, etc.).

This Special Issue welcomes studies that consider the role of forest certification and related policies in the enhancement of forest resources and their contribution to the conservation of biodiversity, socio-economic influences and forest health, and certification perspectives from stakeholder sectors. Specifically, this Special Issue will focus on research that demonstrates how forest certification and related policies are implemented in practice, and the impact evaluation of these tools.

Dr. Aureliu-Florin Hălălișan
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• forest certification
• forest policies
• procedures
• standardization
• criteria
• audits
• conservation
• high conservation value
• social
• healthy and safety
• forest management
• sustainability
• harvesting condition
• pesticides
• roads