19th of June 2021 this date has become holiday for our Organisation as our system was Endorsed by PEFC. It was a long 2 years path with a lot of a challenges, but also with a lot of a small wins and the greatest thing is that we have made a plenty of strong connections with all stakeholders.

We believe, that PEFC in Ukraine will support the country in the following challenges:

1. National forest management standard would allow us to harmonize previous legislation and international requirements for a sustainable forest management system
   
2. PEFC reputation will increase the level of confidence in forest workers in Ukraine, which will allow us to build strong relationship with all stakeholders for joint forest management to remedy the effects of anthropogenic climate change.
   
3. The main possibility of forestry in Ukraine is to transform from a source of raw materials into a seller of the finished product on the world market.
   

Today, the market needs a stable and traceable product.

PEFC certification would help us to increase demand for the Ukrainian product, which will lead to investment in this area and growth of our economy.

Also the international demand on PEFC certified Ukrainian final products would support our country in its sustainable development.

Association would like to say thank you to all the Working Group members, the experts and consultants who made a big impact into the process.

Especially All-Ukrainian Non-Governmental Organization the Society of Foresters of Ukraine which gave us the biggest support. The Head of Society Yuriy Marchuk was Head of Working Group on Standard Development.

Also we have never managed this without the support from State Agency of Forest Resources of Ukraine and, of course, from PEFC International during all the process we always felt the contribution and we are deeply thankful for this.

Next steps to be taken by Association NVFCS is to promote the forest certification and its values in Ukraine.

The biggest challenge is to build the PEFC certified supply chain from forest to final product. Wood processing companies need to have demand for PEFC products and ask the forest enterprises for PEFC certified raw material, then they would have a reason to be certified.