Legal Wood in LEED Barks Up Wrong Tree, Say NGOs

Illegal logging is one of our most pressing environmental and social issues. Yet just a few months after the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) began addressing it with a new LEED pilot program, several major environmental groups say the effort should be scrapped and reworked.

The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and other environmental advocates claim that the new pilot provides little technical guidance on legality; instead, they say, its main effect is to legitimize what they consider to be weak forestry certifications.