Of Markets and Forests: Certification and Sustainable Forestry in Bolivia

Bolivia is seldom thought of as a country in the vanguard, but she currently leads the developing world in the certification of well-managed forests, and in efforts to develop a national forest certification infrastructure. While the Bolivian experience with certification largely bears out conventional expectations regarding the behavior of firms in response to market demand for certified products, events in Bolivia over the past three years have more original story to tell. In Bolivia, certification has been pushed not just by markets demand, but by a confluence of institutional initiatives and new laws. The most important of these is a 1996 forestry law that essentially requires all logging operations to practice sustainable forest management. Firms pushed towards sustainable forest management by the new law are increasingly relying on certification to help gain markets for lesser-known species. Also significant is the development of national certification standards and the emergence of a Bolivian certifier. The Bolivian experience with certification offers important lessons to other countries currently striving to promote certification; these lessons are distilled down to four simple design principles. Finally, preliminary comments are made on the lessons offered by the Bolivian experience regarding the long-term viability of certification as a tool for achieving forest conservation.