Coalition asks Trade Commission to examine greenbuilding monopoly -

The Louisiana Forestry Association has joined a coalition supporting fair forest certification by  asking the Federal Trade Commission to review the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) preferential promotion of the FSC program.

The USGBC accepts the FSC certification system in its LEED standards for greenbuilding while  disqualifying the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) certification program and the American Tree Farm System.

“The majority of our forest landowners and manufacturing companies subscribe either to SFI or Tree Farm,” said C.A. “Buck” Vandersteen, LFA executive director. “To ignore the lumber, paper and engineered wood products manufactured in the United States under these standards is unfair, particularly in these troubled economic times.”

Several other forestry groups and family forest landowners have also joined the submission to the Federal Trade Commission. The action was spurred by the Forest Ethics group alleging claims against SFI in hopes of establishing a virtual monopoly of preferred certification status available only to FSC.

“Only 10 percent of the world’s forests are certified under any of the competing certification systems,” said Vandersteen. “Greenbuilding programs should encourage the use of any of these third-party certified programs.”

The goal of the coalition is to ensure market access to a variety of credible forest certification standards.