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.

We are in Phoenix this week for the U.S. Green Building Conference’s “Greenbuild International Conference and Expo.”  This is the major North American meeting on the topic.  More than 20,000 attend, including architects, planners, designers, builders, building owners and managers, government officials and businesses ranging from hotels to colleges to hospitals.

This is the second year that SFI has sponsored Greenbuild.  We participate because the meeting provides us a great opportunity to spread the word about SFI to those dedicated to “green building.”  SFI certification is recognized by many of the leading green building rating programs used by building professionals to help make decisions about products and practices for both residential and non-residential projects.

I am looking forward to the keynote address from Al Gore, who speaks Wednesday at Chase Field, the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball stadium.  More to come on his remarks.

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

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.