Proposed changes in LEED 2012 threaten forests and their inhabitants
Guess whose life cycle may not matter to LEED?
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Since its inception, the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED program has operated as a leadership standard, driving innovation and market transformation, along with environmental and social benefits, by keeping standards high.
In fact, USGBC’s guiding principles state, “USGBC will take responsibility for both revolutionary and evolutionary leadership by championing societal models that achieve a more robust triple bottom line.”
It now appears—based on review of early drafts of LEED 2012, conversations with USGBC staff and the recent Pilot Credit 43—USGBC is considering a very different direction for LEED, one that rewards, for example, materials from barely legal industrial forestry. Even in North America, such forestry condones deforestation, biodiversity loss, highly hazardous chemical usage, and routinely fails to protect water resources, old growth, and indigenous peoples’ rights.
Approach LCA with caution
Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is an important emerging analytical method, but current LCA tools fail to account for almost all of the environmental and social values of forests. In short, it is in no way a substitute for FSC forest certification.
So any incorporation of LCA into LEED should be done with appropriate caution and stakeholder consultation, understanding the values and limitations associated with LCA, and should be in addition to the safeguards for forest values protected by FSC certification. Any LEED credits rewarding the uptake and development of LCA-based tools and disclosures must not undercut leadership standards or dilute their market-transforming effect.
LCA-based tools have a long way to go before they have the capacity to incorporate most of the important impacts that leadership standards can address, including social as well as site-specific environmental and human health impacts. Because they set no minimum threshold for performance, LCA-based tools are not effective in avoiding products from unacceptable sources.
Keep the FSC in LEED and keep the Green in USGBC.
Keep LEED standards high
The Forest Stewardship Council and many thousands of stakeholders are vested in high standards in LEED.
FSC supports an independent forest certification benchmark approach, as long as it represents a maintenance or improvement upon the current reference standard. Our position is simple: FSC should be the floor, not the ceiling, for the reward of credits for forest products in LEED. Another way to say this is “FSC or better.”
LEED’s high standards thus far have served as a stimulus for a revolution within the timber industry in North America. FSC certification in the US and Canada has grown 500% since 2005 from 26 million acres to an astonishing 133 million, an area larger than California and Pennsylvania combined. This is a triumph for our forests and the people whose livelihoods depend upon them.
It is our sincere hope that we can work in partnership with USGBC to craft a set of strong standards that truly define excellence in green building. Please consider this a formal offer of FSC’s support for any genuine efforts to develop high standards for forests and wood products in LEED.
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