First meeting of NCCF Certification Advisory Group held on 17th April 2020

First meeting of NCCF Certification Advisory Group held on 17th April 2020

The first meeting of NCCF Certification Advisory Group (CAG) was held online on 17 April 2020 with Mr Anil Jauhri as the Chairperson.

The CAG has been constituted for advising and facilitating activities related to Certification Standards and Schemes’ developments as also to take care of certification process, accreditation requirements, validation and verification requirements, certification body requirements and any other requirements pertaining to schemes’ operation and implementation.

Mr Jauhri, thanked the NCCF leadership for appointing him as Chairperson of CAG and promised to contribute his bit to the national effort. He appreciated NCCF’s work of developing globally benchmarked and country specific standards for certification of forests, trees outside forests and other natural resources since the need for an Indian scheme of forest certification had been felt for long. He emphasized that our schemes should be designed in a manner that they get accepted at international level as well and lauded NCCF as one of the few Indian organisations to have developed India specific and internationally benchmarked standard. He noted that the Forest Management (FM) Certification Scheme of NCCF has been endorsed by the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), giving it an international recognition.  He was happy to learn that NCCF is in process of developing more such standards and certification schemes which eventually should get internationally recognized.

The meeting covered discussions augmenting certification bodies (CBs) for Forest Certification scheme in operation as also mobilizing CBs for the oncoming Trees outside Forests (ToF) certification and Carbon Registry-India, noting that some state governments have already issued tenders for certification of forests. Given that NCCF scheme is endorsed by PEFC and is thus internationally acceptable, certification under the scheme would promote exports also. Undoubtedly the NCCF schemes are set to grow and contribute their mite to India’s economy.