16A.27
FF?, N - Internationalizing protest: The fight over forestry in Clayoquot Sound
Cintra Cady Agee, Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, New Haven, CT
The internationalization of the forestry issues in Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia increased the social significance of domestic protests and First Nations land claims, helping to mobilize government and industry resources to share power in decision-making over forestry and land-use in the Sound. First Nations demands and environmental concerns over logging in BC came under heated international scrutiny, during which a successful media campaign and boycott of BC forest exports in the US, UK, and Germany was launched by a coalition led by Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network. The combined weight brought the provincial government to negotiate a series of compromises with the competing participants, setting up local institutions for a partnership approach to forest management and land use decisions in Clayoquot Sound.
International protest combined with domestic protest, and succeeded in leveraging social and environmental change in British Columbia. This interaction between local and international efforts seems to be a frequent characteristic of resource conflicts in the past few decades. For this and for other reasons discussed, the protests and the policy response in British Columbia provide an instructive case study of an ongoing process of broadening public and community participation in resource management, and reconciling conservation and development. This paper describes and analyzes these issues using a ‘policy sciences’ framework.
Information, capital, and the political power to implement locally-made decisions have flowed from government and industry since the protests, raising local capacity to secure not only local interests but those of the international environmental community as well, through integrative solutions. The focus has been on how to protect the range of forest values in Clayoquot Sound while still extracting a forestry income for the province and local communities. Clayoquot Sound decision processes contains potential as a prototype for conservation-based, community-led forest management. Their promise lies in the strength of the initial constitutive process and the current ordinary decision processes over land use and forest management, and in the synthesis of local demands for use with wider demands for conservation.
The current processes, from what I have observed thus far, have conducted, a comprehensive baseline problem orientation, as well as iterative problem orientation tasks, through local land use decision-making bodies and watershed boards. These tasks have a relatively stable supply of financial resources (from government and industry) and up-to-date, locally calibrated, inclusively gathered intelligence. Local users, under an internationally defined umbrella of mandates, are largely able and willing to clarify goals and select alternatives.
All of this has taken concerted, sustained effort--not always present in other contexts--and high-level government support--not always present in other contexts. Clayoquot Sound and British Columbia have the resources, catalyzed and continued by public pressure, to be 'exquisitely' rigorous in environmental and job creation planning. Furthermore, these decision processes did not start out nearly as strong; there was a commitment here, certainly sustained by the environmental lobby and First Nations pressure, to learn over time.
Session 16A, Other
Wednesday, 9 October 2002, 1:30 PM-1:30 AM
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