I’ve just returned from Boston, having spent a great day at the USGBC’s Green Build Expo.

This is the 5th year SFI has participated in the USGBC’s Green Build Expo, and over the years the SFI team has spent countless hours in the exhibit hall talking with architects, developers, and policy makers, among others, about sustainability, about the important role of forest certification, and about the evolution of green building.

It is clear to see there really is an evolution – not just for innovative products and building systems, but evolution in people’s environmental consciousness. Across the board, willingness to incorporate sustainability into our lives and adopt workable measures to protect the environment is increasing.

For example, since 2000, membership at the USGBC has more than tripled, and the market value of green building is projected to keep drastically rising as well. According to McGraw-Hill Construction, the green building market at comes in at around $12 billion value in 2008 and the report projects growth to $60 billion value by 2010. (As an aside, we did a special insert with McGraw-Hill and BusinessWeek magazine about mainstreaming “green” and construction – you can download it here: http://www.sfiprogram.org/files/pdf/feature-businessweek-2008.pdf )

For SFI we’ve seen double and triple digit growth across our program. We now have close to 150 million acres of land certified across North America, and over 320 Chain of Custody Certificates. For the year 2007, we calculated a 386% increase in CoC certificates, and with 2008 nearly over, I can assure you that momentum is strong!

The movement is clearly growing.

These programs and organizations themselves are changing too. For SFI, a clear example of how we reflect emerging public values and adapt to new information and science is our public review process which happens every five years. You can learn more about that on our site here: http://www.sfiprogram.org/standard-development-process.php

And as I am sure you all know, the USGBC is considering revising their system to recognize numerous forest certification programs, including SFI. If you didn’t catch it already, you can read my blog post about LEED and SFI here: http://www.goodforforests.com/archives/89

While we’ve participated in the USGBC show as exhibitors for a number of years, today I had the honor of addressing the crowd and introducing a long-time champion of green building, Architect Stefan Behnisch. The USGBC have posted a videostream of the session – you can watch it here: http://www.greenbuild365.org/GreenExpoVideoDetail.aspx?GreenExpoID=19

In addition to being the founding member of international design firm Behnisch Architekten and US-based Behnisch Architects, Mr. Behnisch has lectured at universities around the world. His approach to sustainable architecture is highly acknowledged in Europe and all over the world. He was recently deemed “Environmental Champion” by EnvironDesign Journal and Interiors & Sources and his buildings have been honored by prestigious institutions and industry organizations alike.

I was interested to read some of Stefan’s views on sustainability. In one interview, he said that sustainability is “not a miracle, or secret science, but is mostly common sense and a significant amount of work and effort.” He also said that architecture and environmental responsibility are eternally meshed and “all architects should be practicing responsibly.” I couldn’t agree more.

By the way, have a look at the new ad we launched at GreenBuild: http://www.sfiprogram.org/files/pdf/ads/ad-solidwood-twoways.pdf. It is one of my favourites for sure.

I’ve been thinking about the value of certification for all lands, including public lands, as we finalize SFI’s submission to the U.S. Forest Service, which is inviting views about whether U.S. national forests should be certified. (If you want to send in comments, the deadline for submissions is this Monday, Nov. 17, and the website with all the details is http://www.fs.fed.us/projects/forestcertification/index.shtml)

It’s clear to me that certification is a valuable tool for all forest managers, regardless of who owns the land and how the forest is being used – whether it is for water quality, conservation objectives, timber production, recreation or research. You only have to look at the list of SFI program participants to recognize that certification lets managers consider multiple uses and options for the forest.

Governments are important players in ensuring forests are well managed today for future generations, and U.S. national forests are a great example of public lands that would benefit from certification. The study by the Pinchot Institute for Conservation commissioned by the USFS showed the benefits of certification for national forests, and SFI Inc. welcomes the study and the USFS’s open and thorough response.

The USFS mission statement is to “to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.” This mission is achieved under sustainable multiple-use management.

Third-party forest certification can help Forest Service managers meet their goals, and SFI’s single standard makes it a lot easier for an agency like the USFS that manages lands across the country. It provides a common framework, with objectives, performance measures and indicators that can be tracked and compared to improve planning, practices and reviews in a consistent and comparable context.

SFI has other advantages when it comes to public lands – from our open complaints process to regional SFI Implementation Committees that help to improve practices on the ground, train forest professionals and address questions about practices.

Two-thirds of the 150 million acres of SFI-certified lands in North America are publicly owned. Obviously, a lot of this is in Canada where the vast majority of forestland is publicly owned. But a quarter of the SFI-certified land in the United States is also in public hands – our program participants include state agencies from Maine to Indiana to Washington.

Of course public lands are not the same as private lands. That’s why the SFI 2005-2009 Standard has specific requirements around public lands – there’s more emphasis on public involvement and program participants must participate in land and resource management planning. I fully expect this is an area we will be examining in our review process leading to the SFI 2010-2014 Standard (you’ll soon be hearing more about our regional workshops early in 2009)