Opening the USGBC’s LEED Standard – What’s Missing From the Discussion

An online magazine just posted a piece on the USGBC revision of the LEED standard and unfortunately, the reporter really gets lost in the woods.   I can’t post a comment on their forum, so I’ll use my own!

The Emagazine.com piece starts out well, with stats on the tremendous growth of green building in the United States (2% of the construction market in 2005, projected to be 20% by 2013).  Before you have a chance to reflect approvingly on that progress, they quickly shift to a focus on the “heated fight” and “long-running rivalry” between SFI and FSC and the “controversial effort” by the USGBC to open its system to other forest certification standards.

SFI doesn’t see FSC as a rival – when 90% of the world’s forests are not certified at all, where is the value in rivalry?  Less than 20% of the certified fiber in North America is FSC – the remaining 80% is certified to other standards that are recognized by governments and organizations around the world.  SFI wants the USGBC to create fair science-based benchmarks that will open up the credit to ALL credible forest certification systems used in North America – a long running controversy just doesn’t make sense.

A quote at the end of the article, by a character not unknown to SFI, implies that opening the USGBC standard would doom FSC and “the future of many things green.”  What a load of nonsense. That quote really makes it sound like Mr. Goldman (who is FSC’s lawyer and the author of the Forest Ethics and Sierra Club complaints mentioned in the article) is more concerned with the fate of FSC’s monopoly over LEED green building points for the certified wood credit than encouraging responsible forestry.

Besides the hyperbole about SFI and FSC and the impact of any changes, what’s missing from this story is any balance (save for one quote about how maintaining the status quo with the standard will give an unfair advantage to wood from offshore sources).  The reporter doesn’t acknowledge the views of many others who are urging USGBC to accept all credible forest certification standards.  That includes the National Association of State Foresters (NASF), a group of state forestry officials from all fifty states.

NASF has called on green building programs to accept all credible forest certification programs, naming SFI, FSC and ATFS.  These are the real experts – they are the state forestry officials who see firsthand how the standards work on the ground.   The group unanimously passed a resolution that said:

“The ATFS, FSC, and SFI systems include the fundamental elements of credibility and make positive contributions to forest sustainability. . . . No certification program can credibly claim to be ‘best’, and no certification program that promotes itself as the only certification option can maintain credibility. Forest ecosystems are complex and a simplistic ‘one size fits all’ approach to certification cannot address all sustainability needs.”

You can read more of NASF’s resolutions here http://www.sfiprogram.org/files/pdf/statements_leed_us.pdf

Governors of several states have also called for an opening of the LEED standard, including Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, who a few weeks ago wrote to USGBC:

“The USGBC should fairly assess and include all credible forest certification programs, including SFI and ATFS systems…I urge you to quickly make a board decision to recognize well-managed wood from Minnesota and all credible forest certification programs. In doing so, USGBC can join other government agencies and green building rating programs in recognizing wood as an environmentally friendly building material.”

You can read excerpts from letters written by several other governors here http://www.sfiprogram.org/files/pdf/statements_leed_us.pdf

USGBC needs to start listening to these important voices. Readers of the Emagazine article need a grain of salt.

To read SFI’s statement on the USGBC forest certification benchmarks, click here: http://www.sfiprogram.org/newsroom/?p=245

As many of you have witnessed firsthand, companies, governments, organizations and environmental rating systems around the world increasingly look to forest certification as a key tool in their corporate social responsibility tool-box. And while just 10% of the world’s forests are certified to any standard, it is certainly understandable that questions will arise about the similarities and differences between various programs.

As you may know, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative&reg (SFI&reg) recently became the world’s largest single forest certification standard, and as our program continues rapid growth, we are often asked questions specifically about SFI and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC.) With the 18 month long development process for our 2010-2014 Standard complete, and our new standard launched, we’ve now compiled a comparison report to help answer those questions. You can download this 4 page report on our website – SFI and FSC Certification in North America: A Summary Comparison

In addition, you may wish to participate in our upcoming webinar on this report scheduled for February 4th from 1:00 – 2:00pm eastern. To save your space for this event, please register online.

If you have a question you’d like addressed in the live event, feel free to email the question to rachel.dierolf@sfiprogram.org and we’ll do what we can to answer them all live.

While the programs do have different origins – SFI having been developed for North American forests and FSC for tropical forests – they share common goals and together are an excellent foundation for any procurement policy or forest products guideline. We encourage everyone to review this summary comparison, share it with your colleagues, staff, and stakeholders.

Kathy

Talk about a rewarding start to 2010! We just launched our new standard – check out the summary of significant revisions on our website and our news release with all the details.

You’ll see our new standard improves conservation of biodiversity, recognizes emerging issues such as climate change and bioenergy, and expands logger training in North America. It has made our fiber sourcing requirements stronger, and complements SFI activities aimed at avoiding controversial or illegal offshore fiber sources.

The review that led to the new standard certainly demonstrated the power of our partnerships – kudos to everyone involved.

We also began 2010 as the largest single forest certification standard in the world – more than 180 million acres (73 million hectares) are certified to the SFI forest management standard in North America.

Our new standard, our expanded partnerships and our growth mean we are in a great position to keep leading the push for improved forest practices and more certified forests.

This puts us in a position of responsibility that we take very seriously. We may not certify forests outside North America but our work definitely has a global reach, and a global impact. We cannot act alone, but we certainly can remain leaders in helping raise awareness of the value of forest certification.

In 2010, we’ll be reaching out to anyone who cares about forest management to work with us – not to promote one standard but to show how credible forest certification can make a difference. I hope you’ll join us.

Kathy

We were in Phoenix last week at the Us green Building Council’s well-attended Green Build Expo. I’d like to thank USGBC for hosting this event and bringing together members from all sectors of the building and design community. It is our 7th year with a presence at this show and we are impressed and encouraged with the stellar year over year growth in the event. Like forest certification, green building is no passing trend.

As sustainability practices continue to evolve, it is important that planners, designers, builders, customers and architects know the source of the wood used in their project, and increase the wood in their projects! Today in North America we are all fortunate to have a number of strong forest certification standards, which means the building community have a lot of options when it comes to responsibly sourced wood. But the fact remains that just 10% of the world’s forests are certified – collectively, we all need to promote credible forest certification to influence the other 90%.

As you may know, USGBC is currently reviewing and revising its wood certification benchmarks under LEED. I strongly urge them to recognize all credible forest certification programs, including SFI. This is really a huge opportunity for the USGBC to take a leadership role, end the certification debates and encourage more forest certification worldwide by focusing on sustainability. The certification debates, and subsequent PR stunts, take away from the real goal we should all be working towards – responsible forestry. This sentiment is echoed by Dr. Jeff Howe of Dovetail partners, a non-profit that fosters sustainability and responsible behaviors:

“We must remember that the fundamental purpose of forest certification systems was to decrease deforestation rates, particularly in tropical regions by using the marketplace to create incentives for good forest practices. Quibbling over the relative merits of good systems distracts from that overall goal.”

I hope we’ll be in a different place by the 2010 green build event – I know I sensed a lot of agreement with the notion of putting this debate to bed during our many discussions at this year’s event.

On September 15th, 2009 the US Green Building Council released the second draft of the benchmarks for the certified wood credit in the LEED rating tool. Many of us are disappointed with the direction the benchmarks have gone.

When USGBC began the process of revising its standard, the hope was that it would take an inclusive approach and include a variety of credible certification programs like SFI. That is the approach taken by numerous programs, including Green Build Initiative’s Green Globes system for commercial building in the US, Green Globes Canada for commercial building in Canada and NAHB’s Green Building Guidelines for residential building in the US, among others. The USGBC misses the point with the latest draft and could miss the chance of a lifetime to end the certification debates, encourage more forest certification globally and give architects and builders the choices they need. These benchmarks are still draft and SFI will be filing comments. I encourage anyone who believes in responsible forestry and green building to do the same. For more details, read SFI’s press statement on the SFI website here and see the draft benchmarks here.