From the Plight of the Redwoods Campaign.
Please do it now or this weekend. PLEASE!
Stop Timber Industry Greenwashing
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Dear Friends,
Please do take the time to review this urgent ALERT
from Bay Area Coalition For Headwaters --
we have a deadline looming.
This is one of the most important letters you
can write for the
Protection of The Ancient Redwood Forests and forests
everywhere.
The timber industry's American Forest & Paper
Association (AF&PA) is
pressuring the Green Building Council to promote wood
from forests logged
under the AF&PA's "business as usual" Sustainable
Forestry Initiative (SFI)
standards. ( see below) Maxxam/Pacific Lumber was
awarded SFI certification,
an indication of how meaningless it is.
We need your help and the time is now. You CAN MAKE A
DIFFERENCE!
Comments Needed by February 1
All background info and directions are indicated
below.
Please help get the word out and share with colleauges
and friends and family
and your lists.
Time is of the essence but I know you can do it!
With Love & Respect
Redwood Mary
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ALERT FROM
the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters
January 25, 2005
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Protect endangered Forests and Wildlife
Stop Timber Industry Greenwashing
Comments Needed by February 1
The timber industry's American Forest & Paper
Association (AF&PA) is
pressuring the Green Building Council to promote wood
from forests logged
under the AF&PA's "business as usual" Sustainable
Forestry Initiative (SFI)
standards. The American Forest & Paper Association
(AF&PA) is the most
powerful timber trade association in the world. Its
member companies include
the largest loggers in the United States and Canada
and the largest wholesale
distributors of global wood products.
The construction and renovation of commercial and
residential buildings in the
U.S. consumes vast quantities of wood often from
endangered forests or forests
managed as ecologically impoverished tree plantations.
The U.S. Green Building Council is now soliciting
public comments for LEED's
New Construction Rating System. (LEED stands for
"Leadership in Energy &
Environmental Design." For more info on LEED, see
below) If LEED credits the
SFI certification system it would make the LEED's
standards misleading and
ineffective at reducing environmental impacts, since
the SFI allows and
certifies destructive, business-as-usual industrial
logging, such as large-
scale clearcutting and logging of old growth and other
endangered forests.
The SFI also doesn't track most of its wood, and
allows non-SFI wood to be
marketed as SFI certified.
Maxxam/Pacific Lumber has gotten SFI certification, an
indication of how
meaningless it is. For photos of SFI-certified timber
operations, including
PL's, go to the Don't Buy SFI website
<www.dontbuysfi.org>
As it stands now, the U.S. Green Building Council's
LEED standards encourage
architects and builders to use wood from more
environmentally benign sources,
like forests certified by the Forest Stewardship
Council (FSC). There are
problems with FSC as well, but SFI certification is
much worse, being
completely driven by timber industry motives.
Please urge the US Green Building Council to:
1. Not give credit or recognition to wood certified
by the Sustainable
Forestry Initiative (SFI), the Canadian Standards
Association, or other weak,
industry-dominated logging standards. The SFI allows
and certifies non-
renewable practices like: the logging of old growth,
imperiled species'
habitats, and unprotected wilderness/roadless areas;
the elimination of
biodiversity through the conversion of diverse natural
forests to monocultural
tree farms; and logging at rates faster than trees
can re-grow. The SFI also
allows other harmful, business-as-usual logging
practices like gigantic
clearcuts, excessive use of toxic chemicals, and
management for only a few of
a forest's native tree and wildlife species. The SFI
also lacks a mandatory
"chain of custody" system to verify where SFI
"certified" wood comes from.
2. Only give credit and give recognition to wood
from forest certification
systems that provide equal or greater protection to
sensitive, non-renewable
forest resources and forests' long-term ecological
productivity.
Public comments on the proposed revised LEED standards
(LEED NC) are due
February 1.
To comment, go to:
http://www.usgbc.org/News/usgbcnews_details.asp?ID=1156
<http://www.usgbc.org/News/usgbcnews_details.asp?ID=1156>
.
The standards are at:
http://www.usgbc.org/Docs/LEEDdocs/
NCCC%20v2%202%20MASTER_public_1.pdf
<http://www.usgbc.org/Docs/LEEDdocs/
NCCC%20v2%202%20MASTER_public_1.pdf>
More on the AF&PA SFI:
Visit www.dontbuysfi.com for:
· Photos of SFI certified forest destruction.
· Factsheets with examples of SFI certified
companies that destroy
endangered forests.
· Factsheets and reports explaining problems
with the SFI's standards.
· Factsheets comparing the SFI and the Forest
Stewardship Council.
More on the LEED Standards:
The LEED New Construction (NC) standard is the USGBC's
flagship standard, and
influences other standards like the new LEED standard
for homes. The proposed
changes to LEED NC would still provide credit for FSC
certified wood (i.e., MR
Credit 7). However, a new "renewable resource"
standard (MR Credit 6) would
also provide credit for use of any wood from
"sustainable management systems."
These "sustainable management systems" are poorly
defined, but explicitly
include the AF&PA's SFI and other weak forest
certification systems.
Standards for renewable materials need to look beyond
whether new trees are
grown, and examine whether the ecosystems that
produced the trees are also
renewed. American Lands, the organization that first
put this alert out
states that the FSC is the only forestry system that
meets LEED's goal of
transforming building practices by recognizing the
most (i.e., top 25%)
environmentally responsible practices. The SFI, by
contrast, certifies
business-as-usual logging on most industrial forests
in the U.S. The new LEED
standard's distinction between certification and
"sustainable management
systems" will not help much, since the new standard
would applaud the SFI as
being "sustainable" and give builders credit for using
SFI wood.
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Redwood Mary
(Mary Rose Kaczorowski)
P.O. Box 14146
Berkeley CA 94712
Plight of The Redwoods Campaign Archives
http://redwoods.bullhorn.org
“Each generation has its own rendezvous with the land, for despite fee titles and claims of ownership, we are all brief tenants on this planet. By choice or default, we will carve out a land legacy for our heirs. We can misuse the land and diminish the usefulness of resources, or we can create a world in which physical affluence of the spirit go hand in hand. History tells us that earlier civilizations have declined because they did not learn to live in harmony with the land”— Stewart Lee Udall, The Quiet Crisis
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ECOTERRA Intl.