BATTLE STILL ON
The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) continues to battle with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) over the council’s refusal to fully recognize most of North America’s forest certification programs in its benchmarks.
SFI says the USGBC stand on certification “discriminates against North American forests and against almost all of the independent forest certification standards used in the United States and Canada.”
“SFI is a globally recognized, science based forest certification program with a variety of conservation and community partners,” notes SFI president and CEO Kathy Abusow. “As the USGBC continues to court a half decade long process to figure out wood and the forest certification credits, the rest of the world has long moved on and get it already – wood is a sound and responsible building material and forest certification is an added proof point that forests are well managed.”
According to an SFI news release issued last week, the USGBC benchmark development process, which officially began in 2005, may result in the continued exclusion of independent forest certification standards used in North America, including SFI, the American Tree Farm System (ATFS), the Canadian Standards Association’s (CSA) Sustainable Forest Management Standard, and the Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) schemes.
“SFI has cautioned the USGBC that a process like the one currently proposed could result in never ending revisions, assessments and evaluations year after year with no clear results,” Abusow says. “It is time for USGBC’s leadership to move on and give credit for wood use and forest certification standards. That is what SFI says, what government agencies say, and what professional foresters and their societies and institutes believe.”
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