The essential elements of the Australian Forest Certification Scheme (AFCS), which commenced with the drafting of the Australian Forestry Standard in 2000, were fully developed during 2002 and 2003 to provide an 'Australian forest certification scheme' based on Australia's conformity assessment framework.

The main elements of the AFCS are:

1. The Australian Forestry Standard [AS 4708-2007]
   
2. The Chain of Custody Standard [AS 4707-2006] or PEFC's Annex 4: Chain of Custody of Forest Based Products - Requirements
   
3. The JAS-ANZ Australian Forestry Standard Certification Program
   
4. The JAS-ANZ Product Certification Program including AFS Limited's CoC Scheme Rules
   
5. The Logo Use Rules Manuals for the AFS and PEFC Logos
6. For an overview of all these elements of the AFCS, click here for the AFCS brochure.

Other documentation which supports the AFCS includes the report "Benchmarking The Australian Forestry Standard" (to provide a compatibility assessment of the AFS's criteria and requirements with the Pan European Operational Level Guidelines); the report "Australian & Canadian Sustainable Forest Management Standards - A Comparative Analysis of AS 4708(Int)?2003 and CAN/CSA Z809-02" (to provide a compatibility assessment of the AFS's criteria and requirements with the Canadian national standard as both are Montreal Process countries) and the Record of Process submissions made to Standards Australia for the AFS and CoC Standard.

Those documents under the main elements above provide for standard development and accreditation which when combined with accredited certification through independent, third-party certification bodies define the three essential components of a credible certification scheme.The provision of a labelling and claims emanating from certifications provide the visible evidence of conformity by a certified organisation.

The major strength of the AFCS, when compared to other forest certification schemes, is its separation of the main elements of the certification scheme ie standards development, accreditation and certification.

In the AFCS, the elements of standards development, accreditation and certification are undertaken by:

1. Standards development – Australian Forestry Standard Limited
   
2. Accreditation – The Joint Accreditation System of Australian & New Zealand [JAS-ANZ] (for Australian certification bodies) or a member of the International Accreditation Forum (for international certification bodies)
   
3. Certification – independent, third-party, Australian or international certification bodies with four for the AFS and five for the CoC Standard and three for PEFC's Annex 4 (CoC Standard)
   
4. Labelling and claims - Australian Forestry Standard Limited.

It is the framework of the AFCS which pulls together these organisations in the delivery of Australia’s only national forest certification scheme.