In the last decades, it has been rising a major environmental preoccupation arising from climate changes and from continuous deforestations of tropical forests. Thus, it was required a way to guarantee and to state that the forest products were not illegal (improperly extracted from native forest), and one of the instruments developed for this purpose was the forest certification. In Brazil, it has been present for over a decade, through the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), a non- governmental organization which set a standard for certification of forest management. In this type of certification, there are principles, criteria and indicators to be followed in the forest management unit. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the contribution of forest certification in compliance with environmental legislation and forest in the management forest units of plantations. The data was collected on public reports of the certified management units from 1996 to 2007. It was analyzed the reports of the main evaluation and monitoring for the identification and analysis of the major Principle 1 non-conformances (Compliance with laws and FSC principles and criteria). By the obtained results, it was found that the main non-compliances were related to environmental and labor legislation. The non-conformance of Environmental Legislation was mostly related to problems with the Permanent Preservation Areas (PPA) and the Legal Reserve (LR). However, it is emphasized that in the certification process it is necessary that the non-conformances are corrected in a set deadline. Thus, it is concluded that certification contributes to the fulfillment of legislation in forest management units of plantations.
Forest legislation; FSC; Permanent Preservation Areas; Legal Reserve
