Standards Development

Scope

This document specifies requirements for the responsible management of plantation forests, as defined in Clause 3.

It establishes auditable and verifiable requirements, including minimum mandatory elements and performancebased indicators intended to support measurable sustainability outcomes at the forest management unit level. The document provides a technical framework that may be used in conjunction with voluntary or regulatory programs.

The standard is technologyneutral and outcomebased. It does not prescribe specific silvicultural practices or operational methods, allowing the use of legally approved technologies and management approaches that achieve the required performance outcomes.

Purpose

Stakeholders have highlighted the absence of a unified, technically robust, plantationspecific framework within ISO. Although existing certification systems include plantation forests, they were originally developed for native forests and only later “adapted” for plantation contexts. In addition, global reporting frameworks and statistics typically do not distinguish plantationspecific performance, limiting transparency, comparability, and the ability to assess the unique contributions of planted forests across regions.

This NWIP therefore addresses a documented gap by establishing a harmonized, outcomebased technical reference designed to support both voluntary and regulatory applications for plantation forests. It provides ISO with an opportunity to present, in a centralized and systematic manner, the key differentiators that the planted forest sector offers.

These differentiators include but are not limited to environmental services such as soil and water conservation, contributions to habitat connectivity, positive social development outcomes, and the industrialscale production of renewable materials (planted trees). By clearly articulating these unique characteristics, the standard will strengthen the visibility, credibility, and comparability of plantation forest performance globally.

Globally, plantation forests cover approximately 131 million hectares, according to the FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020. Voluntary certification schemes play an important role in advancing responsible forest management worldwide. Publicly available data indicate that FSC certifies approximately 160.7 million hectares and PEFC around 300 million hectares worldwide, representing a significant portion of the certified forest base. However, these figures aggregate plantation and natural forests, as global certification statistics do not disaggregate plantation forests as a distinct category. This lack of differentiation limits the ability to assess certified plantation forest area and highlights an opportunity for a complementary, internationally harmonized framework focused specifically on plantation forests, strengthening transparency and supporting consistent reporting across regions.

In some cases, certificate holders may supplement certified material with controlled wood when certified supply is not sufficient to meet market demand. This situation reflects a combination of factors identified by stakeholders, including implementation and maintenance costs, administrative complexity, and limited economic returns associated with certification in certain contexts. At the same time, projections indicate an expected 80% increase in global timber demand by 2050, underscoring the importance of accessible, scalable, and diverse frameworks that can support responsible management across different regions.

To address these gaps, this proposed ISO standard establishes a globally harmonized, science based, Single user licence only, copying and networking prohibited and auditable framework focused exclusively on plantation forests. Rather than replicating the scope or governance of existing voluntary certification schemes, the standard provides an additional, technically robust reference that can be used alongside them. It introduces a consistent, outcome oriented approach that supports responsible forest management across diverse regional and national contexts while offering a complementary option that can be integrated into regulatory or voluntary systems according to stakeholder needs.

This proposal adopts an indicator based transparency approach: indicators are used to demonstrate performance and achieve continuous improvement, not to impose fixed thresholds or technology bans. Conformity is demonstrated through objective evidence, allowing diverse, legally compliant management solutions.

The standard may be developed using a crosswalk with relevant ESG frameworks (such as ISSB, GRI, and ESRS) and associated metrics, supported by a standardized vocabulary and indicators designed for reuse. This approach reduces duplication, lowers reporting costs, and improves consistency and auditability.

The standard is designed to be natively geospatial and to incorporate requirements aligned with emerging regulations, including elements such as cut off dates, geolocation obligations, traceability of commodities, and measures to demonstrate compliance with deforestation free regulations. By focusing on plantation forests, the standard will support the generation of actionable, structured data that can be integrated into responsible sourcing, risk assessment, and corporate ESG reporting systems.

The standard provides internationally agreed requirements applicable to plantation forests in diverse regional and national contexts. It is designed to accommodate variations in legal frameworks, environmental conditions, and socio economic realities while maintaining consistency in terminology, structure, and expected management outcomes.

This document complements the broader ISO framework related to forests and chain of custody, including alignment with the principles of ISO 38200. By doing so, it contributes to an integrated and harmonized approach across the wood and wood based products value chain, supporting enhanced transparency, traceability, credibility, and sustainability. This document does not create or imply any certification or endorsement mechanism.

The structure of the standard incorporates provisions that support the assessment of conformity, including requirements designed to generate objective and traceable evidence. These provisions aim to reduce the risks associated with unsubstantiated sustainability claims. Requirements are presented in a format that facilitates their use in a variety of assurance and assessment contexts, including internal evaluations and optional third party assessments, allowing the standard to be applied flexibly across a range of assurance models and organizational needs.

The standard follows a risk based approach that calibrates the depth of evidence, oversight, and assurance to contextual risk. This ensures rigor where it matters most, while avoiding unnecessary burden in low risk contexts. Within this standard, indicators serve transparency, traceability, and performance monitoring; they are not intended to define fixed limits, prescribe specific inputs, or constrain operational methods.

Responsible plantation forest management aims to maintain ecosystem integrity, contribute to socio economic development, and support long term productivity. This standard will define how environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability translate into measurable and verifiable requirements. It will also provide a structured approach for the responsible incorporation of innovations and technologies, including those authorized by national regulatory bodies.

Legal compliance is a core principle of plantation forest management. The standard emphasizes full adherence to applicable legislation, including requirements related to biosafety. For genetically modified trees and any emerging technologies, the standard fully defers to national biosafety and regulatory authorities. It does not create additional approval requirements beyond national law. Requirements focus strictly on transparency, traceability, and evidence of legal compliance.

The standard will provide interoperable and outcome oriented requirements at the forest management unit level, promoting global consistency and supporting the use of advanced technologies approved by regulatory authorities. Its science based structure makes it applicable in regions without access to voluntary certification programs, and is suitable for policy development, internal management systems, Single user licence only, copying and networking prohibited benchmarking, and regulatory alignment.

The development of this standard will follow ISO’s consensus based procedures ensuring inclusive participation by experts from industry, government, academia, Indigenous Peoples, civil society, nongovernmental organizations and other relevant stakeholders. This broad engagement will strengthen the scientific rigor, applicability, and global relevance of the standard.

Additionally, the standard will support stakeholders engaged in biosafety, biodiversity conservation, stewardship, ESG disclosures, and regulatory submissions related to genetically modified trees, as well as cultivar protection and certification processes. This reinforces the standard’s potential to serve as an integrative reference across multiple operational and regulatory domains.

Aligned with other ISO sustainability frameworks, such as ISO 14001, ISO 26000, the ISO 59000 series, and emerging ESG related standards, this document contributes to a systembased approach that enhances consistency and efficiency.

This proposal does not duplicate or replace existing forest certification systems. Instead, it addresses a clearly identified gap related to the lack of a globally harmonized, auditable, and plantation specific technical reference standard. The intention is to provide a complementary tool that strengthens transparency, comparability, and regulatory alignment for plantation forests, without creating parallel governance or competing certification schemes. The standard will support existing certification systems rather than substitute them, ensuring coherence, interoperability, and mutual reinforcement. The goal is to reduce fragmentation through interoperability and reusable indicators.

The document offers a plantation specific structure with mandatory minimum requirements and outcome based indicators that are not disaggregated in existing schemes. It can be used to support regulatory compliance, benchmarking, ESG reporting, and internal management systems for organizations already certified under certification schemes, without duplicating governance or auditing structures.

ESG related indicators will be further defined and linked to commonly used disclosure frameworks during the Working Draft stage, ensuring transparency on their structure, relevance, and interoperability, and allowing users to connect measurable management outcomes with established global ESG reporting systems.

By adopting this standard, organizations will be able to demonstrate conformity with internationally recognized best practices, strengthen market access, and respond to increasing regulatory expectations related to deforestation, biodiversity, and climate change. The proposed standard provides a practical, credible, and outcome oriented framework for plantation forest managers, regulators, and other stakeholders worldwide.

The future Working Draft will explicitly consider alignment with relevant regulations, including deforestation free requirements such as the EU Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 (EUDR), while recognizing that specific cut off parameters and methodological details will be defined during the development of the draft standard. It will include auditable requirements on key sustainability dimensions relevant to plantation forests, including Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), soil and water protection, and responsible use of chemicals. These items are recognized as essential and will be incorporated into the development of criteria and indicators.

Operational aspects such as chemical use, soil management, and vegetation control, which are essential to plantation forest sustainability, will be incorporated into criteria and indicators during WD development.

The future Working Draft will include an explicit deforestation cut off requirement, aligned with international frameworks such as EUDR, with parameters to be developed during the WD stage.

Considering stakeholders’ concerns regarding the use of genetically modified trees, the standard will incorporate transparency and traceability requirements consistent with ISO 38200. Any material originating from genetically modified trees shall be clearly identifiable through claims and associated traceability elements. Specific technical definitions and criteria will be defined during the Working Draft stage. Detailed requirements will be developed during the drafting phase in relation to all social and environmental aspects, obviously including workers' rights and human rights.

Single user licence only, copying and networking prohibited The Working Draft will refine the concept of ‘intensively managed’ to clarify which operational characteristics differentiate plantation forests from other planted forests, ensuring applicability across regional contexts.

The Working Draft will include a specific clause defining categories of genetic modification (traditional breeding, genetic engineering, gene editing) consistent with internationally recognized terminology. It will also consider methods for risk assessment, including when life cycle approaches may be appropriate, to ensure responsible and science based use of genetically modified trees where legally permitted.

This standard remains a technical reference and does not create a certification scheme, governance structure, or verification hierarchy. Organizations may use it with or without voluntary certification systems, ensuring interoperability without duplicating or constraining existing programs.

The standard is designed to remain accessible across diverse regions and operational realities. Its structure expressly avoids creating entry barriers through unnecessary prescription, ensuring that responsible management can be demonstrated through flexible, evidence based approaches.