PLEASE CALL ON USGBC TO RESIST INDUSTRY PRESSURE TO WEAKEN LEED STANDARDS
The LEED green building standard includes a credit for using Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified wood. That credit has become a lightning rod for timber industry groups that oppose FSC and the market transformation that the credit is driving. As LEED has become an increasingly important market force, the timber industry's powerful trade association has extended its opposition to USGBC and LEED as well.
The original Certified Wood credit (MR7) was adopted in 1998 at a time when the FSC had no significant competition in forest certification. With the emergence of industry-backed certification systems, USGBC must now develop a baseline set of criteria by which it can evaluate different forest certification systems. Under increasingly intense trade association pressure and timber industry lobbying against government acceptance of LEED, USGBC has recently committed itself to a process that will determine the minimum criteria that must be met for wood to be rewarded in LEED.
Your feedback and input to USGBC will be vital to the positive development of this process. The Coalition for Responsible Wood Use has been organized to encourage you to demand that any forest certification system recognized by LEED be rigorous and credible. We hope you will join us in urging USGBC to include basic criteria including but not limited to the following for the purposes of evaluating forest certification systems:
DO NOT REWARD WOOD PRODUCTS FROM CERTIFICATION SYSTEMS THAT :
- Allow conversion of natural forests to plantations, thereby damaging ecosystems and undermining biodiversity
- Allow the large-scale harvesting of old-growth forests and the loss of other high conservation value forests
- Lack balanced multi-stakeholder governance and fully transparent processes for all aspects of the certification system
- Contain ineffective rules for governing and labeling non-certified product components. All certification systems allow products that are less than 100% certified, but not all have clear rules outlawing the use of wood from the worst forest practices
- Fail to integrate community perspectives and indigenous peoples' voices in decision-making over forest uses
Recognizing forest certification systems that do not meet these minimum criteria will compromise USGBC's core values and will indicate that the green building industry is willing to accept and reward the status quo in industrial logging.
More importantly, USGBC will have set a precedent that any industry lobbying group with enough money and political clout can manipulate LEED standards.
The Coalition for Responsible Wood Use recommends that you contact your USGBC chapter leadership and make sure your voice is heard. You can also write directly to USGBC at wood@usgbc.org. When the time comes, be sure to take part in the public comment period that will follow the USGBC's upcoming proposal on this issue. To learn more, contact the Coalition for Responsible Wood Use at: workingforests.org
