PEFCaddress

PEFCaddress is a term used in discussions around the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) to denote a proposed standardized digital address for PEFC documents and records. It is described as a way to uniquely identify certificates, audit reports, product declarations, and related data within the PEFC ecosystem. While not described as an officially adopted global standard, the concept is intended to improve interoperability among PEFC member bodies, certification bodies, registries, and operators.

The primary purpose of PEFCaddress would be to enable programmatic access to PEFC information and to link disparate records across national schemes. By providing a persistent, machine-readable identifier, PEFCaddress could support automated verification of certificate status, audit results, chain-of-custody data, and product disclosures. Proponents emphasize that a unified addressing scheme could simplify data exchange, reduce errors, and enhance supply-chain transparency for stakeholders such as manufacturers, retailers, and regulators.

Typical design ideas for PEFCaddress involve hierarchical, URL- or URN-like identifiers that incorporate elements such as issuer code, certificate number, document type, and issue date. An illustrative format might resemble a structured string that can be parsed by software to locate relevant records, while remaining human-readable enough for manual verification.

Adoption of PEFCaddress would require governance by PEFC technical committees and coordination with national PEFC schemes and standardization bodies. Key considerations include governance, version control, privacy, security, and the migration of legacy identifiers. See also PEFC, forest certification, and digital identifiers.