Andy Kerr on FSC Certification for FS and BLM Land (He’s Not a Fan)

As we discussed before, I’m working on exploring different avenues for figuring out the views of various members of the environmental community on how to gain their support for managing fire-prone landscapes. We can call it “increase the pace and scale of restoration”  “managing dry forest landscapes by returning prescribed fire” or “living with fire” for those of us in dry forests.

So far I’ve discovered that trust in the Forest Service is one obstacle.  One way to deal with that would be to make sure that any woody material is removed solely for fuel treatment/restoration/resilience purposes, without considering the need to meet timber targets, that the agreed-to procedures are carried out in practice, and are checked by independent auditors.. which might go back to something like forest certification, only from a restoration/wood waste perspective.

Remember that current sustainable forest certification schemes were developed for forest lands with the assumption that removing trees for forest products was a legitimate use. Well, I am on Andy Kerr’s mailing list, and while I don’t know how typical his thinking is, he is apparently very against FSC certification for national forests (the title of his piece is “Certified Wood from Federal Forests? Hell No. Make That NFW!  Let’s look at his arguments and see if they would be relevant for say a “bonafide waste wood” kind of certification. Note: there is a sustainable biomass  certification program, but that is focused on biomass for energy. I was against it in the 2000s (? anyway, a long time ago) for different reasons, but it is familiar territory to me.

Kerr points out the practices allowed by FSC that he doesn’t think are appropriate for FS land.

Fundamental Issues: Older Forests and Plantations

While the proposed certification standards cover many subjects, let’s focus on two close to the heart of any card-carrying conservationist:

• The conservation of older (mature and old-growth) forests.

The proposed standard calls for the protection of “Type 1” (never touched) and “Type 2” (remnant) “old growth” (not mature) forest. Type 1 protections only apply to stands > 3 acres, and Type 2 to stands > 20 acres. Individual old-growth trees could still be protected as “legacy trees,” but that would be totally subject to the discretion of the federal forest agency. To make matters worse, the draft federal lands indicators would insert a new requirement, saying that Type 1 and 2 are protected where considered “likely” to occur. Leaving the determination of what is “likely” to the federal forest agencies is an open invitation to abuse their discretion.

In addition, this consultation draft removed language that had been recommended to protect “late successional (mature and old-growth forest) stands on federal lands, and grow new ones to their historical levels. It has been replaced by language just requiring a slight net increase in late-successional stands.

• The prevention of new and the ecological restoration of existing plantations.

A Douglas-fir monoculture planation with trees all of the same species, heights, and diameters is ecologically more akin to a cornfield than a forest. There are millions of acres of these ecological abominations on federal public forestlands. Rather than require that plantations be put on a track toward ecological and hydrological restoration, he proposed FSC-US standard would generally bless the existing abominations and allow even more.

Now I can’t imagine the FS throwing out forest plans, ESA requirements, and all that because FSC might be less restrictive. When we were working on it (I reviewed the Pinchot Institute study) we assumed we would pick the most restrictive, be it forest plan plus other requirements or FSC.

Kerr recommends reaching out to board members of FSC and gives their emails. This might be a good general practice for boards of other NGO’s who take actions with whom individuals or groups disagree.

I haven’t kept up with this with all the states, but Minnesota and Wisconsin both certify state lands to FSC, so the idea that publicly owned land can be certified is not new (Minnesota 1997) nor apparently controversial for states.

Finally, Kerr says

– The only logs coming out of federal forests should be by-products of scientifically sound ecological restoration, especially projects that reintroduce structural, species, and functional diversity to millions of acres of monoculture plantations.

• The highest and best uses of US federal public forestlands are the conservation and restoration of biological diversity, carbon storage and sequestration, watershed protection and restoration, and compatible recreation.

• Giving equal consideration to economic, environmental, and social values for federal public forestlands is not appropriate. Economics should not be a factor guiding the proper management of federal forests. Making it so would be like requiring the Smithsonian Institution, the National Park System, or the Department of Defense to turn a profit.

So perhaps we all might agree,  if we could agree on what ecological restoration/resilience might look like. The idea that woody material removed should be a byproduct of restoration was one I think I first heard in the 90’s, and it might have been part of New Perspectives. Does anyone else remember this?  It might be an interesting discussion as to what is “economics” and what are “social values” vis a vis timber production, or wind turbines, or ski areas or ???

Pruitt Comments on Federal Green Wood Purchasing

 

Just as I had written in some comments below, that I thought that the Trump administration will have bigger fish to fry than those from our own little policy streamlet, I ran across this from Greenwire via SAF. It’s so easy to be wrong.. Here’s the link.

 

President Trump’s nominee to head U.S. EPA, Scott Pruitt, said he’s “very concerned” about an agency policy — now under review — that has excluded much of the country’s lumber from purchase.

EPA’s preferred green program accepts only lumber certified through the Forest Stewardship Council and not two other programs — the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and American Tree Farm System.

After industry complaints, the agency said in December that it would take a closer look at the policy and removed references to the restriction from its website.

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative said 95 percent of lumber produced in the United States doesn’t qualify under the rules EPA has been following.

In answering questions at his confirmation hearing from Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Pruitt said he shared the senator’s concerns about keeping out such a large segment of the industry.

In addition, Pruitt said, he was concerned about how EPA initially implemented the policy through agency recommendations in 2015 without seeking public comment.

Wicker, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and a handful of other lawmakers have complained to EPA about the policy (E&E Daily, April 5).

“We’ve had a lot of activity on both sides of the aisle challenging this,” Wicker said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s discrimination against domestic wood.”

While the decision rests with EPA, it affects purchasing across the federal government, noted Nadine Block, chief operating officer and senior vice president for public affairs at the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.

“The differences are few and far between,” Block said. And while EPA has cited Department of Energy policies in citing the recommendation, those policies were “outdated” and the response didn’t satisfy the industry, she said.

 

FWIW,  the EPA policy never made a lot of sense to me. How can one agency (say EPA, with fewer experts no practitioners, and possibly no public involvement) determine that another agency’s management practices (say the FS, determined by many experts, with many practitioners and with public involvement) aren’t good enough to be purchased by the feds?

IN SEARCH OF COMMON GROUND

It seems like an exercise in futility for the “New Century of Forest Planning” group to be discussing and cussing forest planning &/ policy when we haven’t even agreed to the scientific fundamentals that serve as the cornerstone and foundation for any such discussions.

Below, I have developed a tentative outline of the high level fundamentals which any Forest Plan or Policy must incorporate in order to have a reasonable chance of meeting the desired goals. Until we can come up with a version of these “Forestry Fundamentals” that we generally agree to, we are pushing on a rope and wasting each other’s time unless our objective here is simply to snap our suspenders and vent on each other.

In your comments, please note the outline Item that you are responding to. Maybe we can revise my initial effort and come to some common ground. In doing so we would perform a service and make a step forward that would be useful outside of this circle instead of just chasing our tails. Coming to such an agreement would be a step towards developing a priority hierarchy and eliminating the internal conflicts which make current federal forest policy and law ambiguous and self-contradictory. Until we reach common ground, the current obviously unworkable policies will continue to doom our forests to poor health and consequentially increase the risk of catastrophic loss of those forests and the species that depend on them for survival.

– FORESTRY FUNDAMENTALS – 1st Draft 12/15/16

ESTABLISHED SCIENCE WHICH MUST BE INCORPORATED IN PLANNING FOR

THE SUSTAINABILITY OF FOREST DEPENDENT SPECIES

I) The Fundamental Laws of Forest Science which have been repeatedly validated over time, location, and species. They include:
— A) plant physiology dictating the impact of competition on plant health,
— B) fire science dictating the physics of ignition and spread of fire and
— C) insects and pathogens and their propensity to target based on proximity and their probability of success being inversely proportional to the health of the target.

— D) Species suitability for a specific site is based on the interaction between the following items, those listed above and others not mentioned:

— — 1) hydrology, the underlying geology and availability of nutrients in the soil.

— — 2) latitude, longitude, elevation, aspect and adjacent geography.

— — 3) weather including local &/ global pattern changes.

 

II) The Fundamental Laws controlling the success of endangered, threatened and other species dependent on niche forest types (ecosystems):

— A) Nesting habitat availability.

— B) Foraging habitat availability.

— C) Competition management.

— D) Sustainability depends on maintaining a fairly uniform continuum of the necessary niches which, in turn, requires a balanced mix of age classes within each forest type to avoid species extinguishing gaps.

— E) Risk of catastrophic loss must be reduced where possible in order to minimize the chance of creating species extinguishing gaps in the stages of succession.

 

III) The role of Economics:

— A) Growing existing markets and developing new markets in order to provide revenue to more efficiently maintain healthy forests and thence their dependent species.

— B) Wise investment in the resources necessary to accomplish the goals.

— C) Efficient allocation of existing resources.

 

IV) The role of Forest Management:

— A) Convert the desires/goals of the controlling parties into objectives and thence into the actionable plans necessary to achieve the desired objectives.

— B) Properly execute the plans in accordance with the intent of: governing laws/regulations and best management practices considering any economies.

— C) Acquire independent third party audits and make adjustments in management practices where dictated in order to provide continuous improvement in the means used to achieve goals.

— D) Adjust plans as required by changes: in the goals, as required by the forces of nature and as indicated by on the ground results.

— E) Use GIS software to maintain the spatial and associated temporal data necessary for Scheduling software to find and project feasible alternatives and recommend the “best” alternative to meet the goals set by the controlling parties.

What did I miss, what is wrong, what is right, what would improve this list of Forest Fundamentals?

Does the Forest Sector Have Something to Teach the Oil and Gas Industry?

I think it’s interesting to compare and contrast how we think about different kinds of resources use. There are many oil and gas wells on public lands, as well, so this is a bit out of our normal sphere but relevant to this blog.

I think when people in environmental groups focus on “don’t do it”, when the action continues to happen, there is less emphasis on “doing practices better and reducing the environmental impact.” Or perhaps because environmental lawyers are very active in these groups, and don’t feel as comfortable with the nitty-gritty of operations?

Back when I worked for the Forest Service, I was in discussions with environmental folks in the Administration (not this one) about potentially requiring oil and gas operators who work on public land to have an independently audited EMS. When I look back I wonder if the conversation might be different today if that had happened.

Now I know that many readers hate EMS the way the Forest Service did it. And it gets mixed up with sustainable forest certification..which is about being audited to external standards. But when we were exploring the use of EMS back then, we did find a few things about some gas and others wells and got them fixed, and looked at how to systematically improve things so that the problem didn’t happen again.

The idea that people figure out where their environmental impacts are, and use continuous improvement practices to reduce the environmental effects, and the work is watched by independent folks (and funded by the companies themselves, not the taxpayers) .. seem like that could help build and share knowledge.

It would be a good story to tell, it seems to me, how they are working to make their operations safer to workers and the environment and reduce environmental impacts. Maybe they are, and that’s not being covered in the press(??).

Here is an article from the Denver Post on the State of Colorado grappling with the increase in oil and gas operations. It seems to me like they could learn something from the experience of state and others regulating forest practices.

State enforcers also are trying to shore up protection for wildlife habitat.

A Colorado Parks and Wildlife team is updating maps of sensitive habitat where drillers must consult with biologists. Proposed changes, if approved, would lead to 2 percent net increase in areas where surface activities are restricted and a 10 percent net increase in designated sensitive habitat.

“In some cases, new wells will be subject to consultation” with state biologists, Lepore said. “In others, this requirement may no longer apply.”

The overall number of state inspectors is expected to increase to keep pace with the expanding oil and gas operations.

COGCC enforcement currently has 15 inspectors who are charged with monitoring operations at about 51,000 active wells statewide, in addition to oversight of waste disposal and cleanup at depleted drilling sites.

Those inspectors physically visited 6,179 industry sites this year and conducted inspections of 10,678 wells, state data show, confirmed by Lepore. COGCC supervisors this month are interviewing candidates for six new positions. They plan to hire another six by early 2014, which would bring the total to 27.

“More inspectors on staff,” Lepore said, “will mean that more inspections are conducted.”

Three inspectors are to be equipped with infra-red cameras to detect toxic leaks. One camera in use is borrowed from the Regional Air Quality Council. COGCC officials recently purchased two more. While the cameras cannot measure how much has leaked, they can help pinpoint the source.

Infra-red cameras, Lepore said, “are another tool to promote best practices and to reduce impacts.”

SFI, FSC, CSA and LEED III

Yesterday I was out on an SAF field trip to Waldo Canyon..to look at the fire. Hope to get to share photos of that in the next few days. I would like to reiterate the question I posed in post II of this series…

Jay said:

In a state like WA or OR, you have to reforest after a regen harvest, but if you own 50,000+ acres and just cut 40% of your landbase over several years, how sustainable is that for local mills in the coming years (many now severed from a source of timber), ecological processes and organisms dependent on later seres or successional stages of forests? How is that sustainable for workers and communities when so many harvests were crammed into such a short period of time that labor/contractors had to be imported from outside of the community, only to leave when the cutting is done .

Now my read of any standard (SFI, CSA and FSC) is that cutting 40% of your landbase within several years would not meet the criteria. If we knew what company that was, maybe we could investigate how SFI treated it.

I am still curious and I think it might be interesting to run this one to ground.

Also, I tried to reply to Jason’s comment, but discovered that we had exhausted the number of comments. So here is his comment again and my reply.

Jason’s comment:

Superficially, SFI’s board mimics FSC’s 3 chamber system. From the SFI website:

“SFI Inc.’s 18-member multi-stakeholder Board of Directors comprises three chambers, representing environmental, economic and social interests equally… Board members include representatives of environmental, conservation, professional and academic groups, independent professional loggers, family forest owners, public officials, labor and the forest products industry”

http://www.sfiprogram.org/about-us/sfi-governance/sfi-board-members/

But look who is on their BoD in the environmental sector: The Conservation Fund, Bird Studies Canada, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, Ducks Unlimited Canada…not exactly a who’s who of the environmental community.

The social sector has two forestry academics, a state forester, a family forest owner and a guy from Habitat for Humanity Canada. Nothing wrong with that, but not notable for diversity or independence from the forest industry.

SFI appoints its directors from within. FSC’s BoD is elected in open elections by its membership — and membership in FSC is open to all. SFI has no membership.

Now to be fair, the conservation community has, by and large, spurned SFI, although there was a time when SFI tried reaching out to the major environmental groups to try to get them involved. Also, there was a period in the aughts when representatives from The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International served on the SFI BoD, which at that time was called the Sustainable Forestry Board or SFB. In the end, however, they left. I remember a key staffer from TNC saying that for a while they thought they could improve SFI from within sufficiently to justify their involvement, but that hope faded with time.

I think most of us hope that the forest certification wars won’t continue forever, and that at some point there will be some sort of rapprochement if not a merger. At the moment, though, that day seems a long way off.

I found Jason’s comment very interesting from a variety of perspectives. First of all, “the conservation groups listed are “not exactly a who’s who of the environmental community.””

1. Now, first of all, I think that we might all have our own roster of what environmental groups have the characteristics we prefer. It might be interesting for the folks on the blog to talk about their faves and why. There being a “who’s who” kind of implies that there is a generic feeling on the quality of environmental groups. I have read Bevington’s book on what some of the grassroots groups think of the big groups (not that the grassroots groups would like SFI any more than the bigs).

Now, I have been at the end of campaigns in which some of the groups said things which weren’t strictly speaking, true in my opinion. I acknowledge that culturally some groups throw things at an opponent, hoping some stick (that is how legal briefs are written). But do they really believe all the assertions? Do they go with the flow of their peers? Does the accuracy not matter in pursuit of “larger” goals?

As to the Sierra Club, I would be up for an open discussion with the public of certifying federal forests. I am not so much for behind the scenes working without giving the public the chance to talk about it ( a la NEPA-like process). If what I hear is true, of course.

2. It sounds as if some of the environmental groups may have withheld their support from SFI because they are aligned with FSC. I think we’re talking about chickens and eggs here. If these groups think they can do the best deal they can get with FSC, that’s fine. But then to say that it is a sign that SFI isn’t good enough because those groups don’t support it … SFI would have to allow even fewer things than FSC does, plus there would be even more drama.

3. I guess I am having a hard time with “The social sector has two forestry academics, a state forester, a family forest owner and a guy from Habitat for Humanity Canada. Nothing wrong with that, but not notable for diversity or independence from the forest industry.”

I guess I am having trouble with the idea that Habitat, forestry academics, and a state forester can’t be “diverse” or “independent from forest industry.” Jerry Franklin is a “forestry academic.” Most of the academics I know don’t get any money from the forest industry, so I don’t know what exactly you mean, unless it’s “growing up in an environment in which you know people who work for the forest industry.”

If I were TNC, I wouldn’t be on the SFI Board because the whole SFI vs. FSC thing generates more heat than light and TNC seems to be fairly good at prioritizing for practical conservation. Or the risks aren’t worth the rewards. Who knows? But it may or may not be based on any real problems with SFI as currently configured and managed.

SFI, FSC, CSA and LEED II

We had 62 comments on the previous post here, but annoyingly the columns get smaller and smaller the more comments and replies you have and at some point they get hard to read. I think we reached that point. We are working on this by moving the blog, but for now, I’ll just start another post on the SFI -CSA-LEED question.

First of all, I would like to express my appreciation to Jason for engaging in this dialogue. If I stand back from all this, I see that when groups use hype to make their points and accuse others of bad intentions, certain personalities (if there is a “natural resource professional” personality,) just tunes them out and erects a barrier for self-protection. The problem with the barriers (on both sides, and you can extrapolate to partisan dialogue about a lot of things) is that we can’t listen to others because we don’t like to be maligned. But if you think peace is good, and that the best ideas for our mutual future come from a diverse group, then there is no alternative to talking across our comfort zones. As a Denver metro area resident, I see this more often with the energy industry. Anyway, I really appreciate that Jason has given us so many thoughtful comments.

One of his comments that I found very interesting was this one about sustainability and cutting 40% of the total land area at once. This is something we can work with.

Sustainability, Montreal Process and CSA

So if we go back to the definition of sustainability, as a bureaucrat I would tend to go with the Montreal Process Criteria and Indicators here. They are really designed for countries, though, so let’s go to the CSA standard, in which our northern neighbors consciously stepped down the C&I to specific land management.

Here’s how they started, so they don’t seem to have the same “industry dominated heritage” of SFI.

CAN/CSA-Z809 – Canada’s National Standard for Sustainable Forest Management
CSA worked with a diverse range of stakeholders interested in sustainable forest management to develop

Canada’s National Standard for Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) CAN/CSA-Z809. A volunteer technical committee, representing consumers, environmental groups, government, industry, Aboriginal, academia and other stakeholders was established to develop the Standard. CSA committees are created using a “balanced matrix” approach, which means that each committee is structured to capitalize on the combined strengths and expertise of its members – with no single group dominating over the content of a CSA standard.

This voluntary Standard, developed by an open and transparent multi-stakeholder consensus-based process, resulted in an endorsement by the Standards Council of Canada as a National Standard of Canada.

The CAN/CSA-Z809 SFM Standard, developed according to an internationally recognized and accredited standards development process, is based on the international Helsinki and Montréal processes. It incorporates Canada’s own national SFM criteria, which were developed by the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers. The Standard links adaptive forest management to forest certification through three key requirements:

Performance Requirements
Public Participation Requirements
System Requirements

Now remember, major US imports are from Canada.
here is the 2012 Certification report from Canada.

Canada leads the world in attaining third-party sustainable forest management certification. This independent verification provides added assurance of responsible forest practices from a country with some of the world’s toughest and well-enforced forestry regulations.

The phenomenal growth of forest certification in Canada has been spurred on by a forest industry commitment to third-party certification. In 2002 the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) – whose members manage the vast majority of the commercial forest in Canada – became the only national forest trade association in the world to require members to certify their operations to any of the three major, credible standards recognized in Canada:

Canadian Standards Association (CAN CSA/Z809 or Z804)
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
Sustainable Forestry Initiative® Program (SFI)

Four years later that goal was met. This commitment has been instrumental in spurring the phenomenal growth of forest certification in Canada, allowing the country to meet the growing customer demand for certified forest products.

SFM Certification Status in Canada—2012 Year-end
Standard Used Acronym Area Certified (hectares)
Canadian Standards Association (CAN/CSA-Z804 or Z809) CSA 44,921,371
Forest Stewardship Council FSC 54,080,929
Sustainable Forestry Initiative SFI 57,577,838
Total Certified for all SFM Combined: (some areas double counted) 155,950,138
Total Area Certified: (double counting removed) 147,928,855

So I think that it’s important in the LEED debate to also talk about CSA which doesn’t suffer from SFI’s alliance with timber industry. And in these certification debates, we seldom talk about CSA, despite the fact that about 1/3 of Canadian wood is certified to it.

It’s interesting that the dialogue tends to be from FSC about SFI and not so much about CSA. But even if you think SFI is not sustainable, why shouldn’t LEED give the same credits to CSA?

Now onto a specific example that might be enlightening.

Jay stated that:

In a state like WA or OR, you have to reforest after a regen harvest, but if you own 50,000+ acres and just cut 40% of your landbase over several years, how sustainable is that for local mills in the coming years (many now severed from a source of timber), ecological processes and organisms dependent on later seres or successional stages of forests? How is that sustainable for workers and communities when so many harvests were crammed into such a short period of time that labor/contractors had to be imported from outside of the community, only to leave when the cutting is done .

Now my read of any standard (SFI, CSA and FSC) is that cutting 40% of your landbase within several years would not meet the criteria. If we knew what company that was, maybe we could investigate how SFI treated it.

SFI “Greenwashing” Complaint Filed with Federal Trade Commission

Last month this blog explored some of the differences and validity of the two main “green” wood certification programs in the U.S. – the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI).

The FSC bills itself as “an independent, non-governmental, not for profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests” while the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) (which the U.S. timber industry established in 1994) bills itself as “an independent, non-profit organization responsible for maintaining, overseeing and improving a sustainable forestry certification program.”

SFIYesterday, ForestEthics and Greenpeace filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking the agency to investigate the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI)’s claim to be a ‘green’ certifier of forest products. The complaint argues that SFI’s claim that it is an independent, non-profit public charity is deceptive and misleading because SFI is substantially governed and financed by the timber industry and because its vague and ambiguous forestry standards are developed and approved by timber industry personnel in a closed process.

The complaint is based on the FTC’s recently revised “Green Guides” and is joined by more than 2,800 individual consumers filing their own complaints, and supported by over 8,000 who signed a petition demanding that the FTC take action. This is the largest number of Green Guides complaints concerning a single scheme that the FTC has ever received.

Here is the opening portion of the complaint filed with the FTC:

On behalf of ForestEthics and Greenpeace, the Washington Forest Law Center (“WFLC”) submits this Complaint because consumers are being deceived by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (“SFI”), a timber industry-funded forest certification system developed for the deceptive “green” marketing of lumber and paper products.

This Complaint provides detailed evidence that SFI is materially not in compliance with the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) revised “Green Guides,” which were formally re-promulgated on October 11, 2012. As set forth below, ForestEthics, Greenpeace, and allies believe that SFI engages in several unfair and deceptive acts and practices, which detrimentally mislead corporate and individual lumber and paper consumers who rely on certification in making purchasing decisions. Hundreds of millions of dollars in “green” spending are at issue.

We ask the FTC to investigate this Complaint and to take enforcement action requiring SFI to either cease its deceptive marketing practices or to make the necessary disclosures so as to comply with the revised Green Guides.

News of this FTC complaint follows closely on the heels of four more major US companies, Hewlett Packard, Office Depot, Southwest, and Cricket, announcing plans to move away from the SFI.

ForestEthics began its campaign against SFI’s greenwashing of forest destruction by filing complaints with the IRS and FTC in 2009. Since then, 24 companies have moved away from the SFI.

In April, the SFI sent a ‘cease and desist’ letter – a threat to sue – to ForestEthics. But, if sued, ForestEthics intends to vigorously stand by its First Amendment right to challenge SFI with truthful facts and opinion and to report SFI to consumer protection government agencies.

“The Sustainable Forestry Initiative label is the timber industry’s cynical effort to get a piece of the highly valuable green marketplace in the US, which is currently valued at $500 billion dollars annually.  We have demonstrable proof that in many regions of the U.S. and Canada, SFI offers virtually no environmental protection beyond that already required by state and federal laws and worse, it offers cover and false marketing for companies trying to take advantage of consumers’ best intentions,” said Aaron Sanger of ForestEthics. “It’s no surprise that the SFI is trying to intimidate ForestEthics with threats of a lawsuit – the green marketplace is growing more valuable by the day. Our Federal Trade Commission complaint today is proof positive that we will not be bullied.”

The complaint submitted by ForestEthics and Greenpeace yesterday centers around the following: The FTC’s Green Guides forbids deceptive claims of independence. The SFI claims that it is independent, but it has direct material connections to the forestry and paper products industry. In 2011, 93 percent of SFI’s funding came from SFI “program participants,” that includes a veritable “who’s who” of the timber and paper industry such as logging giants Weyerhaeuser, Plum Creek, and Rayonier.

The FTC works on behalf of consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. The FTC’s Green Guides were introduced in 1992 to provide guidance to companies that want to call their products “green” or “eco-friendly” and help marketers ensure that claims they make about environmental attributes of their products are truthful and non-deceptive. The Green Guides were last revised in 1998 although the FTC began a comprehensive review of the Green Guides in 2007, which resulted in the 2012 revisions.

ForestEthics’ ongoing campaign to expose the SFI’s certification program in the U.S. marketplace began in 2009. ForestEthics’ work has revealed that the widely-used forest certification program is financed and governed by the timber industry. The SFI misleads well-intentioned companies and consumers into thinking they are making environmentally sound choices, when in reality the program “certifies” forestry practices that wreak environmental harm, including logging that create massive landslides, destroys rare wildlife and fish habitat, pollutes streams and rivers, and contaminates communities with toxic herbicides and fertilizers. By engaging with supporters and allies, ForestEthics is exposing the truth behind the SFI label while persuading regulators like the Federal Trade Commission and market leaders like Fortune 500 brands to take a stand against SFI “greenwashing”.

ForestEthics is represented by the Seattle-based Washington Forest Law Center, which played a key role in preparing ForestEthics’ FTC complaint.

“A Modest Proposal”- Certification for National Forests II

NFCertificationStudy_PIC 1

Yesterday’s discussion was interesting, and I think we need to carry it forward. But my first thought was that I was proposing a solution to what many perceive to be a problem. It occurs to me that we may need to back up to understand how people think about whether there is a problem or not.

IF cutting trees and selling them can be done in a sustainable way (as environmental folks seem to think about FSC) (I know there is controversy about SFI vs. FSC, and I also don’t like the idea of public forests being managed to standards developed by third parties, still, the reason I brought it up is that it says that environmental groups think timber harvesting is OK in specific places, with specific practices).

I think it’s well worth a read of the Pinchot Institute’s National Forest Certification study Executive Summary here. If you have more time, you might be interested in the other documents.

This is from the Executive Summary of the Pinchot Institute study about forest certification:

This represented an important breakthrough in the contentious arena of forest conservation.
No longer were forest industry and environmental activists simply locked in a legal and policy stalemate over whether timber harvesting could take place, but how it could take place while ensuring that it is ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially responsible. These developments also held out the promise of calming some of the public controversy around forest management, by providing citizens with credible assurances that the forests in question were not being overexploited, and adequate protection was being provided for forest areas of exceptional importance for conservation values such as biodiversity, wildlife habitat or water quality

During the time period I was reviewing this study I always considered this to be MBWT “or management by wishful thinking”, but it is asserted in the study (also the Executive Summary):

This report describes the results of independent audits of five units of the National Forest System ranging from 500,000 to 1.5 million acres in size. This case study is the culmination of what has become a ten-year research project that ultimately involved forest certification audits on state forestlands in seven states, 30 areas of Native American tribal forestlands, and one national park. It should be noted that, in each case, the independent audits identified needs for corrective
actions, and in each case these were successfully addressed by the agencies’ forest managers. A general conclusion among the agencies themselves is that the reduction in costs associated with public controversy and legal challenges—not only on agency budgets but on the spirit and morale of their forest managers—more than offset the time and expense associated with the certification process.

(Italics mine)

So here were a couple of my concerns:

1) FSC practices are (were) all over the map. It would be better to certify to publicly developed practices (the equivalent of the broad labor union contract in conflict resolution?). But environmental groups are attached to FSC; we could have the public develop the practices and have third party audits, but then it wouldn’t be “FSC”. With all the technical and scientific folks in NFS and R&D and all the folks with practitioner knowledge, the State wildlife folks, etc. it just seems like you could do a better job with standards than FSC did.

2) It would be better for the FS to have a broader third party audits in terms of its management (beyond vegetation management, the whole enchilada, recreation, grazing, oil and gas, ski areas) (not so sure I still think that).

Now, some may think that everything is fine now. But I would ask everyone to “listen with the ears of the heart” as per Benedict of Nursia to a previous comment on this blog here by Rob DeHarport, where I think he articulated “the problem” clearly:

In my humble opinion the problem is two-fold. The first part is the utter failure of President Clinton’s Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP). Of the five stated priorities or goals in the NWFP, none have been fulfilled. Lawsuits and the potential of lawsuits on virtually every timber sale in the NW have resulted in the “Gordian Knot” that former USFS Chief Jack Ward Thomas has referred to in his assessment of the failed NWFP of which he was a key player. The state of Oregon, timber dependent counties, cities and schools continue to struggle to replace lost revenues that occurred soon after the Northwest Spotted Owl (NWSO) was listed as an endangered species.Neither the NWSO or local and state economies have been able to replace lost revenues despite the best efforts.
However, budgets have tightened, increased taxes are not likely in already poor counties. Curry County is virtually bankrupt. Lane County can not afford to hold violent criminals in jail, etc. etc. Meanwhile, the Federal government Rural School Funds have dried up as the nation continues to print and borrow money at a record and unsustainable pace. The NWFP was supposed to find a “middle ground,” it did not happen. Yet, here we are nearly 20 years later living with a failed plan. Governor Kitzhaber created another committee of stake-holders to find a solution with little or no success.
Mac McConnell’s statement is true. In US House District 4 there are nearly 5 million acres of National Forest. Since the NWFP logging has been scaled back far below what the NWFP called for due to continued protests. The logging that is occurring on these lands will essentially create a 5 million acre spotted owl reserve. As the thinning projects leave trees that are less than 80 years old to grow to age 80 and older- thus becoming “Old Growth Spotted Owl Habitat.”
I live in the Oakridge area of the Willamette National Forest, I have walked with USFS staff through a couple of thinning timber sales as I mentioned in the previous paragraph. These sales take years of planning and navigation through the “Gordian Knot.” There is also the excellent Jim’s Creek Oak Savanna Restoration Project near my home that has been stymied at a little more than 400 acres due to the very real risk of litigation or the lack of commitment by USFS upper management to allow such good sound forestry.
Here are two paragraphs from Wikipedia concerning the Elliott State Forest:
Controversy arose in 2011 in response to changes in the way the forest is managed. Adopted by the land board in October 2011, a new management plan aims to increase annual net revenue from the forest to $13 million, up from $8 million. It would achieve this by increasing the annual timber harvest to 40 million board feet culled from 1,100 acres (450 ha), of which about three-fourths could be clearcut. The former management plan, adopted in 1995, called for 25 million board feet from 1,000 acres (400 ha), half of it clearcut.[5]

The plan also changed the way in which the forest is managed to protect threatened and endangered species such as spotted owls, marbled murrelets, and Coho salmon. Supporters of the new plan say it will benefit wildlife by making more acres off-limits to logging than had been reserved for owls, murrelets, and watershed protection under the old plan. Opponents of the plan say it will damage habitat and harm wildlife. They would prefer a plan that promotes thinning of young trees, avoids clear-cutting, and seeks other ways of raising revenue from the CSF lands.[5]
In July 2012 despite the great recession the US imported $216 million dollars of softwood lumber from Canada. (according to the Sept. 17, Globe and Mail) Meanwhile rural Oregon timber counties have a unemployment rate that is actually over 20%, and our forest continue to be passively managed at best.
I am the Mayor of the small community of Westfir and serve on the Oakridge, Oregon School Board. I know first hand how failed policy has impacted rural Oregon timber towns and counties. There is a middle ground, we have not come close to finding that sweet spot in managing our forests.

I’d be interested in hearing

If you don’t think that there is a problem, and why..

What you think about whether certification alone would solve “the problem” in your opinion.
Apparently some in the environmental community doesn’t want NFS to do certification, I’d be interested in their rationale, if anyone knows.

Possible 21st Century Solution to the Timber War Aftershocks- A “Certification Agreement”

FSC on display in Final Four  (© Connor Sport via YouTube)
FSC on display in Final Four
(© Connor Sport via YouTube)

So I’ve been thinking (some might say procrastinating from reading the Planning Directives) about ideas to get from there to here with regards to sustaining rural economies. Based on the comments on conflict resolution about BATNA’s and negotiation tactics, it would seem that we would want to make some large decisions and negotiate those.. perhaps writing something in to law that if projects follows those rules, they would not be open to litigation or some further nuanced variant of that idea.

So the next things that came to mind is “if environmentalists are for FSC certification, then logically “logging can take place in an environmentally sound manner.” Now, I am not a fan of FSC requirements for reasons I could go in to, but let’s just do the thought experiment for now. Check out their website here if you are curious about their claims. They say they are “protecting and maintaining high conservation value forests” and they have rules about how to do it. My point is that it is possible to generate a set of rules and monitor them at a level broader than a project or forest.

Biologically and physically, land is land, regardless of owner. So, say, if it’s environmentally fine to produce timber from private ground with FSC, then it should be equally environmentally OK to produce it from federal ground. If that’s not OK, then groups need to come up with some reason other than the environment, as to why that’s the case. Folks on the blog can help me clarify my logic here.

So what if we coupled a certification requirement of some kind with requirements to be negotiated, with reduced capacity for litigation? Basically like a labor agreement instead of renegotiating the agreement every workday with every project.

I remember I used to work on certification a bit when I worked in the FS. What I heard was that some environmental organizations were against it due to a philosophical dislike for commercial use of forests (now I never spoke to them, but conceivably that would include outfitter-guides, ski areas, etc. if it were philosophical). It’s OK to be philosophical but let’s be clear about what’s philosophical and what’s environmental. Let’s also be clear about the social justice aspects of employment in different sectors.

A reader sent me this piece, from Jim Petersen which raises some of the same ideas. It’s worth reading, called “Collaboration, been there, done that.”

Having watched federal judges and environmentalist lawyers twist federal forest regulations into pretzels with no beginning or ending point, I’ve concluded that collaboration’s only chance for success rests in first restoring its public credibility, and second in the Forest Service putting on its big boy pants and telling the public that federal timber is a valuable and vitally important strategic asset that needs to be actively managed using the best tools science provides.

Consensus forestry – collaboration – will not serve this nation’s long term economic and environmental interests any better than stewardship contracting. Both are tools the Forest Service can and should use appropriately, but someone needs to make the hard decisions about timber management, and that someone is Forest Service Chief, Tom Tidwell. At the very least, he ought to vigorously pursue third-party forest certification of all federal forests. Let’s see if our national forests are being sustainably managed. I frankly doubt it. In some national forests, mortality from insects and diseases now exceeds annual growth – a condition that is not sustainable by any measure.

There is a very good reason why most people who live in rural timber towns no longer waste their time in “scoping” meetings or “collaborative efforts.” It is because the process is rigged. If environmentalists participating in “collaboration” don’t like the result, they sue with impunity because the law allows them to do it. Win or lose, they can even collect their legal fees from taxpayers. This is ridiculous, insulting and wrong.

Collaboration will only work if Congress first declares that the results of collaboration – the actual plans developed by disparate interest groups working together toward a commonly shared goal – are not subject to judicial review by any court in the land. Thus, the end result of the patience and hard work that collaboration demands is an on-the-ground management prescription the Forest Service can implement without fear of appeal or litigation.

Until Congress bulletproofs collaboration, it risks the same miserable fate as the brilliantly conceived forest planning process that now rests atop history’s trash heap.

Sustainable Forest Certification Wars..

fscvssfu

Check out this piece in Forbes about the Certification Wars in Canada . I think it’s worth reading just to remember that there are other forest environmental issues besides public lands in the U.S.

For those of you who don’t follow this debate, remember that we couldn’t certify our local dead lodgepole to either standard because it doesn’t come from managed forests. Hence the EPA got credit fro greenness for importing bamboo from China for its building in central Denver, while dead lodgepole from around the corner was not “less green” but appeared to be “less green” due to the structure of the certification industry.

Even the Forest Service has touted its LEED buildings. I don’t know about you, but I feel that the FS has some very, very smart engineers and we should be paying all the bucks we have for this to get information from them about the best investments to make to make buildings greener and save the taxpayer bucks at the same time. This would be rather than pay some firm to certify that we are using less energy. Especially when they wouldn’t count the FSs’ own wood as sustainable.. So off that soapbox..

Between SFI and FSC..

Are there significant differences between the competing schemes? Independent observers see a convergence of standards as pressure for transparency on both groups has grown. Canada’s EcoLogo and TerraChoice, part of Underwriters Laboratories Global Network, each rate SFI and FSC identically. A United Nations joint commission recently concluded: “Over the years, many of the issues that previously divided the systems have become much less distinct. The largest certification systems now generally have the same structural programmatic requirements.”

University-based researchers who have scrutinized the two labeling programs have found few meaningful differences. For example North Carolina State professor Frederick Cubbage, North Carolina State University Forest Manager Joseph Cox and a team of researchers concluded that while SFI and FSC “have a slightly different focus, both prompt substantial, important changes in forest management to improve environmental, economic, and social outcomes.”

The convergence in standards has not stalled the politicization of the labeling competition. The two systems are currently going head to head in the US. The FSC has been entrenched because of the support from the US Green Building Council. USGBC adopted FSC standards in the mid-1990s, when it was the only game in town, for its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system. It’s remained loyal because of fierce lobbying by green activists. Hundreds of cities and agencies in the US now mandate LEED standards, which means that FSC receives preferential treatment in building projects across the country.

This has created some unintended consequences. Because FSC label accounts for just one quarter of North American’s certified forests, three quarters of the wood from the continent’s certified forests are not eligible for LEED sourcing credits. As a result, LEED creates incentives for green building projects to import wood from overseas, resulting in the browning of the supply chain from excess carbon emissions generated by shipping costs. Nonetheless, activist greenies have dug in their heels, determined to do everything in their power to delegitimize competing systems.

The USGBC has never explained why only FSC forests can receive LEED credits. Michael Goergen, Jr., CEO of the Society of American Foresters, has criticized the USGBC for not including other standards, stating, “FSC or better is neither logical nor scientific, especially when it continues to reinforce misconceptions about third-party forest certification and responsible forest practices.”

Some believe LEED FSC-only framework has led to a loss of jobs. Union leader Bill Street of the International Association of Machinists stated that the “ideological driven ‘exclusivity’ of FSC means that systems such as LEED contribute to rural poverty and unemployment while simultaneously adding economic pressure to convert forest land to non-forest land uses.”

Growing concern about the rigidity of the LEED program has led to the emergence of a competing green building initiative in the US. Green Globes, run by the Green Building Initiative, recognizes the SFI and is now in the running along with FSC to be the preferred federal certification program. The Defense Department, one of the earliest LEED adopters and a huge source of new construction, is currently not allowed to spend public funds to achieve LEED’s “gold” or “platinum” certification because of questions about whether the added costs are justified by the benefits.

What’s odd about this is that it is linked to biotechnology in forests.. but the problem with biotechnology in forests in North America is not a lack of acceptance. It is, and always has been, a lack of penciling out.

Now.. to relate to our usual business.. remember that these groups:
Rainforest Action Network, Friends of the Earth and World Wildlife Foundation, Greenpeace, ForestEthics and the Dogwood Alliance seem to believe that if you follow FSC guidelines you are being sustainable. That is, removing forest products and actually using them can be done in a sustainable way.