The Yale Program on Forest Certification, in cooperation with the State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of Tasmania, and the Rainforest Alliance, is hosting a symposium and workshop on forest certification, June 10-11, 2004. To be held at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, this major event will explore the social, ecological and economic effects of forest certification in developing and transitioning societies. The symposium will disseminate and provide feedback on 16 draft case studies developed by in-country scholars exploring forest certification in the Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa. Practitioners, the business community, donors, NGOs, and the academic community are all called on to use their expertise in review panels for the case studies, enriching the work done by the authors and identifying knowledge gaps. This will help the authors build on their research to conduct even more informative analysis. Because the systematic study of forest certification and its effects is fairly new, this is a significant opportunity to build upon the international expertise of this group and promote future use of this methodology in assessing forest policy. Following the Symposium, the authors and project team will hold a closed workshop, June 12-13, where authors

will revise their case studies according to symposium input. Further information: http://www.yale.edu/forestcertification/symposium/