After years of criticism from environmental and human rights experts, the industry-dominated third-party certification system known as the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) is in the hot seat for making sustainability claims that lack the requirements and oversight necessary to ensure them.
In a recent complaint filed by environmental law non-profit Ecojustice with the Competition Bureau of Canada, eight environmental organizations, including Greenpeace Canada and the David Suzuki Foundation, are requesting an investigation into SFI’s dubious claims about its sustainable forestry certification scheme. The complaint reiterates long-held concerns from civil society organizations in both Canada and the U.S. that SFI’s requirements are vague and discretionary, essentially allowing for industrial logging operations in old-growth forests and threatened and endangered species habitat to be promoted as “sustainable” and even climate-friendly.
The complaint makes the case that because SFI's sustainability claims are both untrue and made with the purpose of promoting the adoption of its Standard and the purchase of wood and wood products certified by SFI, they violate the Competition Act which provides a civil prohibition against false or misleading representations. Moreover, the complaint asserts that SFI’s misleading claims “have contributed and continue to contribute to unsustainable logging globally and in Canada on an immense scale.”
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