This thesis is a first detailed approach to forest certification and related matters for Greece. The design of the research took into account the procedures of the most important international certification organisations and constitutes one of the few trials to create a sustainable forest management (SFM) certification standard which is compatible with the requirements of the FSC's and PEFC's certification standards.
The specific objectives were to investigate Greek forest decision makers' and forest stakeholders' general attitudes towards forest certification and related matters (part 1, chapter 4), to develop a compatible SFM certification standard (part 2, chapter 5) and to test and evaluate this standard in two pilot forest management units (FMUs) in order to derive conclusions on its functionality and generally on whether Greek forest management is close to specific certification requirements (part 3, chapters 6-8).
In the first part of this thesis a survey of attitudes opinion and behavioural intentions of the Greek head forest officers and various forest experts towards forest certification and related matters was made by mailing two similar questionnaires to each group of study. The results showed a positive attitude of the respondents towards all related matters and in general towards the development of a SFM certification system in Greece. A social survey which was made in the two forest management units, demonstrated similar results as all the surveyed groups ( employees of the forest
districts, forest workers, local people and shepherds) were positive about the granting of a SFM certificate for their forest area.
In the second part of this thesis a management standard was developed which is compatible with FSC's and PEFC's management requirements. The third part of this thesis presents the evaluation of the created standard in the two pilot forest management units (namely Dadia FMU and W. Menalo FMU). The main methodology for parts 2 and 3 was created by CIFOR and has been transformed and adjusted to fit the needs of this research project. The results of the evaluation process
showed that the created standard worked well in both FMUs with some corrective actions required in order fully to cover the standard's requirements.
The results of this thesis fonn the initial, and most important, steps for the development of a forest ce1iification scheme and should prove to be very useful for any future Greek SFM certification initiative.