There is urgent need for government, donors and industry to support the newly established Vietnamese Forestry Certification System in order to meet the government’s ambitious forest certification targets, especially given the vast amount of smallholders in the country. It is therefore essential to ensure that certification is an affordable, accessible and realistic option for uptake throughout Vietnam’s forest sector, including smallholders. This is one of the outcomes of the ‘Furthering PEFC: Challenges and Opportunities for Smallholders Using a Cooperative Model’ workshop in Hue, Vietnam at the end of May, which brought together more than sixty stakeholders from across the forestry sector.

PEFC Switzerland revised the country’s national forest certification system following the entry into force of the revised 2018 PEFC Sustainable Forest Management standard. In order to provide you with additional information about this revised national system, we are holding a webinar on 8 February, at 10:00 CET. The webinar is free to attend, and everyone is welcome. Register for the webinar at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZItf-yvrToiG9ajX1uyrbU0GSLyC4cUuJWn

The wise use of the world’s forests is critical to our survival and a healthy environment. Forests are vital in maintaining life as we know it, as they: *cover one third of the earth’s land and absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide making them a major instrument in mitigating climate change, *absorb airborne impurities and give off oxygen allowing us to breathe clean air, *protect our watersheds and provide us with clean water, *are home to the majority of the world’s terrestrial species, and many people around the world—1.6 billion according to the World Wildlife Fund—depend on forests for their livelihoods.