September 29, 2009
NGOs Battle Over “Green Wood” Certification
Accountability & Transparency Trends
President Obama, who is publicly committed to greening the government, is caught in the middle of a fierce competition between NGOs over what “green” certification system best encourages sustainable forestry. The new playground for President Obama’s daughters was made with wood that came from a certifiably sustainable forest as was the paper used to print the inaugural invitation. But they were each certified by different organizations that are at odds with each other. The White House uses paper from timber certified by the independent Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The playground was made with wood certified by the Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI), established by the wood and paper industry.
This competition is about to take on a new urgency. The president reportedly wants to expand the greening of his home. According to the Sierra Club, Obama has directed his staff to put the White House in line to earn a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a non-profit organization that publicly highlights buildings and communities that implement more sustainable building design, construction, operation, and maintenance. Although LEED applies to energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, and improved indoor environmental quality, its most far reaching impact extends to the use of the primary building material: wood from forests. But choosing between the two primary certification systems is proving nettlesome.
This is not only a symbolic battle, but also a high stakes economic one. Although green construction represented just 2 percent of the building market as recently as 2005, a market intelligence report by McGraw Hill Construction’s Green Outlook 2009 estimates that it could grow to a quarter of all commercial and institutional building starts and 20 percent of the value of residential starts by 2013. The total dollar value could swell to $140 billion, spurred by the injection of $5.5 billion under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, signed into law by President Obama.
Different Origins
The FSC rolled out the world’s first “green wood” label in 1993, in the wake of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro the year prior. Anticipating campaigns by environmentalists, some key retailers, including Home Depot, which became a founding member, and IKEA, signed on to the certification standard. The effectiveness of the FSC initiative soon received the ultimate compliment from logging companies and the wood and paper industries. Concerned about putting certification in the hands of an independent consumer-focused NGO with no track record of dialogue with their industries, the American Forest & Paper Association set up its own certification organization in 1995, and now is the largest sustainable forest certifier. Over the years, industry groups established the Canadian Standards Association and the Pan-European Forest Council, but FSC and SFI remain the two eco-green heavyweights. Now they are going head-to-head in a battle for recognition under the LEED system and even the White House seems caught in the middle.
The U.S. Green Building Council has only recognized FSC certified wood since its inception in 2000. But it’s drafting new science-based rules that are expected to open the door to various green wood labeling systems, including SFI’s. The USGBC plans to hold open hearings on the certification revision plan. According to the Yale Program on Forest Policy and Governance’s 2008 report on the USGBC’s policy options for forest certification, only one quarter of lumber used by the US construction industry bears any type of sustainability certification, with SFI’s share at more than 10 percent, and FSC’s at less than 5 percent. The SFI standard is embraced by some green building organizations, such as Green Globes and the National Association of Home Builders’ (NAHB) National Green Building Standard, and is acceptable under the stimulus package. SFI has also forged relationships with some industry-leaning environmental groups, such as The Conservation Fund, NatureServe, and Conservation International. And although it was founded by the wood and paper industry, it officially severed ties with its founding trade association in 2008. Home Depot and many other retailers and wholesalers now embrace both standards.
The SFI argues the big tent theory—that its existence has convinced many wary loggers who are not receptive to handing oversight to third parties to gradually introduce sustainable management practices. “It really is high time that USGBC take a look at this, because the forest certification market has changed in the last decade,” says SFI President and CEO Kathy Abusow. “It’s fabulous. We are very, very pleased.” Abusow notes that only 10 percent of the world’s forests are certified to be sustainable today, which she says suggests that any efforts to encourage sustainable forestry should be welcomed.
But not everyone is so pleased. The FSC is more broadly supported by left activists and the environmental community. Backers, such as ForestEthics, argue that the SFI promotes lax industry-manipulated standards, which they believe explains why it has attracted a larger pool of customers in a short period of time and is now the most popular standard in North America. “If our leading green building rating system can’t maintain its leadership, we should all be concerned,” says Corey Brinkema, president of FSC-US, who warns that SFI’s entrance into the LEED rating system could halt the “greening” of mainstream building practices that has been gaining momentum in recent years. “If [SFI] gets recognized as good enough, that sends a pretty powerful signal that existing practices are adequate.” In early September, lawyers for ForestEthics filed administrative complaints with the Federal Trade Commission and the IRS, challenging the credibility of the rival label.
Differences
What are the differences between the two standards? There is no question the SFI sets a more flexible threshold for industry. FSC prohibits landowners using its label from converting natural forests into tree farms or other non-forest uses in the vast majority of cases, while SFI has no comparable prohibition. Before gaining FSC certification, forest managers not only must develop a plan for maintaining the ecological functions of the certified forests, they must also identify, map, and preserve “high conservation value” tracts that have high biodiversity, are home to endangered species, or play a vital role in the lives of local communities or in the region or country. FSC also requires consultations with indigenous and other local people living in or around the forest. While SFI calls for forest conservation, there are no concrete requirements for community consultations or for set-asides to preserve areas of high biodiversity. There are also no prohibitions on some conventional silviculture practices that the FSC bans as harmful to forest ecology.
FSC proponents are convinced that the SFI remains an industry plot to undermine standards and that the USGBC will buckle to lobbying pressures. Green building consultant Jason Grant of Sebastopol, California, maintains SFI has grown at the expense of FSC as a result of an intentional industry effort to undermine the label. “The industry has developed an embargo on FSC to try to keep it in a boutique box,” he says, although he has offered no specific evidence to support his allegation. But whatever its origins or current application, the SFI is too big and too important to ignore. “It is the 800-pound gorilla,” says Rick Fedrizzi, president and chief executive of Green Building Council. “That’s the group that we need to try to convince to do better in forest management.”
Some activists challenge both certifications as too soft for comfort. Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, which charts a comparison of the two standards, says both FSC and SFI undermine their own credibility by letting lumber industry executives participate in setting the rules for certification. “They have industry voting on the standards. For that reason alone, they are not independent labels,” says its senior scientist, Urvashi Rangan. And neither the FCS nor the SFI are set up to address what may be the most important issues of all: how to maintain carbon sequestration in certified forests or prohibit the devastation of old-growth logging. As industry and NGOs battle over certification standards, are they in fact missing the forest for the trees?
Jon Entine is a visiting fellow and Moon Doh is a fall researcher at the American Enterpise Institute.
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