The Yale study was released in 2020 and compared the most recent published version of the FSC and SFI forest management standards: 2010 and 2015-2019 respectively. Both standards are currently being revised, but until they are finalized, no more up-to-date comparison will be possible.
The only other recent academic study we are aware of that compares the systems also finds significant, substantive differences between them:
Gutierrez Garzon, A. R., Bettinger, P., Siry, J., Abrams, J., Cieszewski, C., Boston, K., Mei, B., Zengin, H., & Yeşil, A. (2020). A Comparative Analysis of Five Forest Certification Programs. Forests, 11 (8), 863. https://doi.org/10.3390/f11080863
For those who are interested in nerding out on this topic, I uploaded copies of the two standards into our Shared Resources folder. If you take the time to look at them, I think the fact that they are different will be obvious – for one thing, the FSC standard is 10 times as long.
WWF has been deeply involved in forest certification since the beginning. We have analyzed and commented on every version of the SFI standard that has been released in the last decade+, including the current one under revision. We have a representative on the board of FSC US who is currently up to her elbows in the FSC FM standard revision. We have visited many forests certified under both systems. We believe there are important differences between them and that overall FSC is the more rigorous. We are open to any credible evidence that suggests otherwise – if you have any, please share.
If the goal is to promote climate-smarter forestry, then we believe we should elevate the system whose standards are higher in regard to its attributes. This does not mean ignoring or discounting the other, but if we are aiming for 10, and one system is at 7 while the other is at 5, then it makes no sense to us to treat them as equivalent.
All this said, I hope that we can avoid an ongoing and unproductive debate about forest certification. Through long experience, I know this can easily suck all of the oxygen out of the room. In this case, it could prevent us from focusing on the many dimensions of climate-smart wood procurement on which we agree and can make progress if only we focus our time and energy there.