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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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.

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.

Ron Wilson from buyalder.com posted a great comment/ question the other day and I thought it deserved its own post – join in on the discussion.

Ron Wilson: Do you feel that there is any chance that the Leed program will not accept SFI certification? Our customers are very concerned about SFI certification losing any value if the Leed system does not move in this direction.

SFI welcomes the work the USGBC is doing. Their work and the inclusive approach they are considering reflects the direction many other green building programs have taken. Examples of these programs that do include a variety of credible certification programs like SFI are the Green Build Initiative’s Green Globes system for commercial building in the US, Green Globes Canada for commercial building in Canada, NAHB’s Green Building Guidelines for residential building in the US, the BRE Environmental Assessment Method for commercial buildings in the UK, and The Code for Sustainable Homes for residential homes in England.

If the USGBC evolves to recognize SFI and other certification programs it would support their position as being among the leaders in the complex, evolving, and critically important world of green building. I am hopeful that through working with USGBC and helping them understand what SFI delivers vis-a-vis other certification programs we will be included. It is too early in the USGBC process to know where SFI will come out because they are still developing their benchmarks against which they will assess the different certification programs. After they develop their benchmarks, the different standards will be assessed and that process will likely not be completed before summer 2009. Once the benchmarks have been developed we will have a better understanding of where SFI fits.

So, am I concerned about SFI’s value changing if LEED doesn’t implement an inclusive approach? Honestly, I believe in the strength of the SFI program – it is one of the largest, fastest growing and most comprehensive forest certification programs in the world. We have grown from 48 chain-of-custody certified locations a year ago to nearly 900 to date. I don’t expect that to change regardless of the outcome of LEED – governments around the world recognize the value of SFI, as do numerous other green building rating systems. (Have a look at our green building fact sheet.)

At the end of the day, certification need not be contentious – there is a lot of room in the green building arena for certified wood products The issue is not which forest certification system is better; they all deliver on key values such as protection of special biological or cultural sites, management strategies to protect species at risk and wildlife habitat, sustainable harvest levels, prompt regeneration, 3rd party accredited certification audits, and public audit reports with corrective actions listed. I think it is in the planet’s best interest if we all focus on the 90% of the world’s forests that are not certified and do not have strong legal frameworks.

While we are on the subject of how certified wood fits in the realm of green building, I’ll end my post with a little food for thought – wood is the only building material that comes with third party certification.