A group of us at school are working on a proposal to certify a
watershed under the FSC scheme. The watershed is comprised of
primarily private woodlot owners (96% by area), so we are looking at
group certification as a possibility. It is our understanding that
each landowner will still be able to manage their land according to
their own values as long as the principles and criteria are met, while
cooperating with each other to meet landscape level objectives. The
average woodlot is about 35 ha in size. We have begun to ask
ourselves a few questions on the topic of sustainability, or
specifically sustainable wood supply, and that is: At what scale
should the harvest be sustainable? The woodlot scale or the watershed
scale? If at the watershed scale, how do you allocate portions of the
AAC across hundreds of landowners?

We're proposing sustainability at the watershed level, with some sort
of a quota system. Just wondering how other group certification
initiatives have tackled this issue.

Scott