The US Green Building Council released for public comment a 3rd round of draft benchmarks to evaluate forest certification programs.

At SFI, we continue to urge the USGBC to end a forest certification policy that discriminates against North American forests and against most of the independent forest certification standards used in the United States and Canada.

We’ve just released a detailed statement on these benchmarks and the USGBC process – you can read it on our main website here.  Here is an excerpt….

As currently drafted, the USGBC’s complex benchmark system to may result in the continued exclusion of independent forest certification standards used in North America, including SFI, the American Tree Farm System (ATFS), and the Canadian Standards Association’s Sustainable Forest Management Standard (CSA), and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes (PEFC).

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Those that know me have heard me talk a lot about the “Power of Partnerships” lately. It is simple, really – when we work together – sharing ideas, resources, and expertise – we have a greater positive impact on the world. So as we start a new year I am pleased that we’ve just launched a program that gets to the core of this “power of partnerships – SFI’s Conservation and Community Partnerships Grant Program. These grants are designed to strengthen landowner and community outreach, and bolster the conservation-based activities that mean so much to our program. Check out our website for more information and an application. The grants are just one more way we are connecting with the immense network of individuals and groups who, like us, are making a difference on the ground, in communities and in the marketplace.

We’re especially interested in projects that explore topics of current importance – like the role forest certification can play in the emerging bioenergy and carbon market, or how our program can help address illegal logging or improve wildlife habitat management. We are also keen to find more ways to benefit communities. Many program participants, led by SFI Implementation Committees, are already working with Habitat for Humanity affiliates to use wood from our communities to build our communities. I’m looking forward to seeing more of this kind of collaboration – especially when it leads to green homes for people with lower incomes or Aboriginal communities.

We’ve purposely kept the grant program as flexible as possible. Each project must have a non-profit organization with appropriate expertise as a principal partner, and each must demonstrate how it supports our new SFI 2010-2014 Standard. We’re also looking for activities with a regional or wider focus. The amount of each grant depends on the project – we’ve budgeted a total of up to $400,000 for 2010.

One of the things I truly value about the SFI program is our ability to reach out to landowners and communities – this lets us achieve results far beyond SFI-certified lands. At last count, there were over 2,500 people involved directly with the SFI program. These deep roots into communities across North America keep our program and our standard relevant and strong.

The deadline for applications for the Conservation and Community Partnerships Grant Program is March 1, 2010. If you want more information, you can register for an information webinar on Jan. 26, 2010 at 1 p.m., or contact Allison Welde, SFI Director of Conservation Partnerships and Communication.

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.

Check out Conservation Fund President and CEO Larry Selzer’s great “guest blog” on CNBC.com. He outlines the critical role of forests in combating climate change and providing many other benefits. He also explains the importance of credible forest certification programs such as SFI and FSC