Wood Certification In building, the most significant form of labelling to date involves wood products. Of the forests which once covered three-quarters of the Earths surface only one-fifth of that forest cover remains healthy and intact (Bryant, Nielsen, & Tangley, 1997). While traditional forms of forest protection have had some success in protecting specific forests, they have had little effect on the overall rate of deforestation. Building construction accounts for almost half of wood consumption in North America (Edminster, 1997), and changes in the quantity and quality of wood used in construction can have a major impact on global ecosystem regeneration. Wood certification emerged from activism of the rainforest preservation groups that in the early eighties organized widespread consumer boycotts of bad wood from tropical rainforests. In the UK, Friends of the Earth (FoE) developed a good wood scheme and in 1989 proposed that the ITTO study the possibility of a certification and labelling plan. That effortalong with early 90s efforts in the European Union to establish performance certificationmet stiff and successful resistance from the forest industry. In the North America, the Rainforest Alliance spawned the nonprofit SmartWood Program, the worlds first certifying organization, in 1989. Shortly after, the for-profit