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By Nancy B. Solomon, AIA

In an attempt to slow down or reverse this kind of devastation, several organizations have formed in the past 10 years to establish universal principles and criteria for responsible forestry practices. Perhaps the best known is FSC (www.fsc.org), which is now headquartered in Bonn. Specific guidelines are tailored to each country to accommodate particular regional conditions. And accredited certifiers, including two based in the United States—Scientific Certification Systems and Rainforest Alliance’s SmartWood Program—are trained to work with companies to assess whether or not they are in fact meeting their countries’ specific criteria for forest management. If yes, the companies are issued a forest-management certificate for a designated period of time. According to UNEP, nearly 46 million hectares (113,668,475 acres) of forestland distributed over 61 countries has been certified by FSC as of September 1, 2004 (www.certified-forests.org).

 

Representatives from Mountain Lumber, based in Ruckersville, Virginia, traveled to China to purchase Chinese elm timbers that had been dismantled from ancient structures (above). The logs, which had been assembled with mortise-and-tenon technology, were trucked to Canton (belowt) and then sailed to the U.S., where they were milled into floor planks. The first installation—into a Charlottesville shop (far below)—was completed in September. Photography: © Philip Beaurline (above); Courtesy Mountain Lumber Company (top two)

FSC has also established a chain-of-custody certificate to ensure that products labeled as FSC-certified are truly created from certified timber. This is necessary because many lumber companies buy from both certified and noncertified sources. Certified timber, therefore, must be tracked from the forest through production to the end user so that buyers of certified products are indeed getting what they paid for. The same groups that assess forest companies for the management certificate also handle chain-of-custody certification.

Murphy’s position at the Rainforest Alliance was established this year, in large part to assist architects and other design and construction professionals in identifying and specifying certified wood products from both here and abroad. Suppliers of such products can be found on the Web site of their SmartWood Program (www.smartwood.org). Certified forest products can also be located through the Forest Certification Resource Center (www.certifiedwood.org), which is sponsored by Portland, Oregon–based Metafore (www.metafore.org), another nonprofit working to protect the world’s forests.