SFI Pilot Projects
Continuous improvement is key to ensuring the strength and rigour of the SFI forest standard. Important issues are explored during each review of the standard, and these often lead to pilot projects involving SFI partners or supporters that continue between review cycles.
Each pilot project is designed to establish baseline information and outputs that will guide future reviews of the SFI Standard, and ensure its provisions are achieving the best results on the ground. They contribute to the SFI Standard as a living, continually improving code of best practices, exploring important issues such as controlling invasive species or determining the best way to identify sites for vertebrate species that should be protected.
Over the last 10 years changes to the SFI Standard resulting from pilot projects have included:
- A requirement that program participants use NatureServe or equivalent processes in North America to identify and protect species and communities that are identified as critically imperiled or imperiled.
- A call for procurement provisions to address biodiversity hotspots and major tropical wilderness areas outside of the United States and Canada, as defined by Conservation International.
- New performance measures and indicators designed to help thwart illegal logging.
SFI Inc. also appoints task forces to work on specific issues of concern to the program, its participants and its supporters. For example, an SFI Inc. task force is currently looking at the role of SFI certification in the carbon market.