Social Innovation Generation @ University of Waterloo
CASE STUDY The Great Bear Rainforest Story
Case Study No. 003 January 2010
fostering social innovation in Canada through
research • education • advocacy • collaboration
To send comments to the authors please contact: Ola Tjornbo McConnell Fellow Social Innovation Generation, University of Waterloo olatjornbo@btinternet.com Frances Westley J. W. McConnell Chair in Social Innovation Social Innovation Generation, University of Waterloo fwestley@uwaterloo.ca Darcy Riddell McConnell Fellow Social Innovation Generation, University of Waterloo darcy.riddell@gmail.com ________ If you would like to be added to our mailing list or have questions regarding our Case Studies, please contact info@sig.uwaterloo.ca Please visit www.sig.uwaterloo.ca to find out more information on Social Innovation Generation at the University of Waterloo (SiG@Waterloo).
Case Study: The Great Bear Rainforest Story
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Social Innovation Generation @ University of Waterloo CASE STUDY The Great Bear Rainforest Story Case Study No. 003 January 2010
Case Study: The Great Bear Rainforest Story
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Case Study: The Great Bear Rainforest Story
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The Great Bear Rainforest Story Introduction to the Case Study The Great Bear Rainforest campaign has made a huge impact on the province of British Columbia in the last twenty years. It is a process that is still ongoing, but which must now be acknowledged to have enjoyed huge success. Radical shifts have taken place throughout the social, ecological and economic systems of the area, empowering new groups of actors, creating new decision making processes, allowing for the emergence of new approaches in resource management, and bringing significant new sources of funding to the area. As such, it is a noteworthy example of social innovation and shows us how social innovation can provide a means for tackling the highly complex and critical problems societies are increasingly coming to face around the globe. Understanding how the actors involved in this shift were able to bring about this change is a vital task in helping the academic community to develop knowledge, and ultimately tools that may help many more such complex navigations to occur in the future. It is no trivial challenge. Social innovation on this scale is a highly intricate process that involved delicacies of timing, interacting forces, agency, invention and dedication by a whole host of dynamic and evolving components which is difficult to understand and impossible to replicate. However, in all of this, there are patterns in types of behavior and situations that can be discerned. It is these patterns that this description attempts to seek out, in the hopes that they may provide clues to the ‘how’ of social innovation, a task that lies at the heart of developing responses to complex global problems. The information in this case study is largely based on a series of interviews carried out with key participants in the Great Bear Rainforest campaign, in the spring of 2008 and the summer of 2009. Names have been hidden to preserve the anonymity of interview subjects but transcripts are available upon request.
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Introduction to the Great Bear Rainforest On 31st of May 2009 a momentous deadline was reached for the forests on the central and north coasts of British Columbia. This was the date when a huge portion of these forests, an area called the Great Bear Rainforest (GBRF), fell, finally and fully, under a new management regime known as ecosystem based management (EBM). The advent of EBM was a first for publicly managed forests in Canada, but also a milestone for the transformation of the way that we view our natural heritage worldwide. EBM on the scale attempted here is uncharted territory for forestry and may eventually come to be seen as the model for how people can live sustainably with our most precious natural assets (HJ 2008; CL 2008). Yet this new management regime is only a part of the full story of the Great Bear Rainforest. At the same time that EBM is being implemented, equally momentous changes are occurring in the province’s economy. A $120 million fund has been established to create a starting point for the development of a diversified and sustainable economy, and to combat the poverty and high levels of unemployment that have plagued the small communities of the region (GI 2008). Meanwhile, a ‘new relationship’ has developed between the First Nations, who make up the majority of the Great Bear Rainforest’s inhabitants, and the provincial government. It is a relationship that elevates the First Nations to a dramatically greater status, recognizing them as governments in their own right. They must now negotiate with BC to decide how the Nation’s traditional lands can be used to build the greatest prosperity for all in the future.
Background: The Base System In the early 1990s the Great Bear Rainforest was a radically different beast than that described above. Tellingly, it was in fact not called the Great Bear Rainforest, rather, it was known as the mid‐coast and north‐coast timber supply areas (or TSAs). This prosaic name is symbolic of the longstanding relationship between the provincial government of BC and its chief natural asset, the vast softwood forest that have formed the cornerstones of its economy for much of its history (Wagner 2001). The importance of forestry to the province at this time should not be underestimated. At the time, 8% of jobs in BC were tied to resource extraction industries which also accounted for 11% of the provincial GDP, while over 50% of BC exports depended on forestry alone (BC Stats). In BC, most of the forested land is still crown land owned by the province, meaning that forestry has been a vital source for government revenue. Consequently, a close relationship between the forestry industry and the government had developed. Traditionally, the forest companies have enjoyed long term tenure holding in the forests while the provincial government has had the final word on the fate of the forests, concentrating on generating the maximum possible revenue from this resource (Wagner 2001). Moreover, the forestry industry has supplied some communities on the west coast of BC with a source of employment that became increasingly crucial following the collapse of the fishing industry in the region (GI 2008). At the beginning of the 90s, one could say, that the fate of the forestry industry and the province were intimately linked. Outside of this arrangement, looking in, stood those groups who were opposed to the government’s and industry’s view of the province’s forest resources. First Nations in particular Case Study: The Great Bear Rainforest Story
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had challenged the government’s claims to ownership of the crown lands. BC is unusual in Canada (along with Quebec and the Territories), in that few of the First Nations living in the province have signed land agreements or treaties with the government, meaning that the Nations could still make claims to rights and title over their traditional lands (BJ). Yet, hitherto, the impact of these claims has been limited, and First Nations have seen few of the fruits of the forestry profits, suffering from high rates of unemployment and other social problems (SM 2008). The second major group who chose to fight against the industry and the government were the environmental non‐government organizations (ENGOs) who saw the old growth forests as an irreplaceable ecological system that was in danger of being lost forever to the clear‐cutting practices of the industry. Before the GBRF campaign however, these two groups were marginalized, firmly outside of the political process by which the fate of the forests were decided, with seemingly little chance of changing the established order of the system.
Early Signs of an Opportunity for Change: A Shifting Landscape in BC Even before the GBRF campaign began though, there were emerging forces that threatened to disrupt the established order. Perhaps the most gradual of these was the changing attitude to the environment that was evolving worldwide. Following on from the UN Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1972, attitudes towards clear‐cut logging and other environmentally destructive practices were driving up the numbers and memberships of active ENGOs. Those in BC active in this movement anticipated that continued business as usual would mean the destruction of one of the world’s last remaining old growth temperate rainforest, a unique ecosystem, filled with iconic species such as the white spirit bear and a key salmon spawning ground for globally significant salmon stocks (Save the Great Bear 2009) The First Nations were also slowly beginning to cause disruptions to the smooth running of the system by driving their claims to rights and title over their traditional territories in the provincial and federal courts. Increasingly, they were being met with success. A landmark Supreme Court of Canada decision to establish that the First Nations’ claim on the land was a valid one, was delayed until 1997, but the groundwork to this ruling was being laid already in the early 90s. The economic situation of the forestry industry was also on a downturn. Exports to the US had been a huge source of revenue for the industry, particularly in the 1980s but that changed with the negotiation of a Softwood Lumber Agreement negotiated with the US that limited the amount of forest products that BC could export to its southern neighbor (Wagner 2001). The combination of the memorandum, as well as a rising Canadian dollar and a drop in the global markets for wood products would eventually combine to make forestry in BC a thorny economic proposition and the industry registered huge losses in 1996, 1997 and 1998 (BC Economy). Increasing the volume of timber cut was the traditional industry response for raising profits, and the mid‐coast timber supply area, a difficult region to cut because of its inaccessibility, was increasingly being opened up to new logging ventures (HJ 2008).
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The Tipping Point: A Trigger for Change With these forces working in the background one may speculate that the status quo in BC was slowly heading for a painful readjustment. Instead the system was hit by a sudden disturbance that left key players scrambling to respond to the way that the system was changing. The trigger came in Clayoquot Sound in 1993. Clayoquot Sound, an area on the west coast of Vancouver Island, south of the central coast, had long been the site of a battle between environmental protesters and loggers in a campaign dubbed ‘the war in the woods’ by the media. The ‘war’ culminated in 1993 when a 10,000 strong protest against forest practices resulted in the mass arrest of 900 people, the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. Some indication of the importance of this struggle can be seen in the huge amount of attention it garnered in provincial papers The Vancouver Sun and The Province which both featured almost an article a day on the campaign for a year. The environmentalists were effective in disrupting the logging operations of McMillan Bloedel (McB), the principal company with tenure in Clayoquot, and brought plenty of negative publicity for the government. For the government, the time had come to take urgent action to respond to the threats that were mounting up against logging on the coast. They released a Forest Practices Code in 1995 to answer some of the ENGOs concerns but their main concern was the central coast. They wanted to make sure that a land use plan was put in place to ensure that logging could take place with the support of the main actors so that there would be no repeat of Clayoquot in the much larger mid‐ coast timber supply area (BJ 2008). With a renewed mandate from the 1996 provincial election, the NDP government set up the Central Coast Land Use and Management Planning Table (CCLRMP). This body was designed to work using an approach that would prioritize achieving consensus among the different groups. First Nations and ENGOs would both be invited along with local communities, natural resource extractions firms and unions and all of the other main relevant stakeholders on the central coast. However, there was to be no green revolution, and no real disruption of the status quo, government would remain in control of the process by defining the terms of the negotiations. No more than 2‐3% of the regions, for example, would be committed to any new protected areas (HJ 2008). Government though, was not the only actor that responded to the Clayoquot civil disobedience. The First Nations too were struck by what had happened at Clayoquot. Their longstanding strategy to battle the province in the courts remained in place but there was an opportunity here for them to do something more. In particular, David Suzuki and the Suzuki foundation began to work with several of the First Nations to encourage them to unite together to battle the government, just as the ENGOs had united together. The Suzuki Foundation, although primarily an environmental group, realized that the First Nations of the mid and north coast should be those who had the greatest say over the future of the land base as it was their livelihoods that depended first and foremost on the forest, which had traditionally belonged to them. Thus, the foundation concentrated on trying to develop an effective first nations political bloc, built around a commitment to traditional ecological knowledge and Ecosystem‐based Management, that could be empowered in the debate (Drever 2000, WG 2009). There were some early signs of change in the forest industry too. The Forest Practices Code looked like it might further hamper their activities and the Softwood Lumber Agreement remained Case Study: The Great Bear Rainforest Story
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in effect. McMillan Bloedel had been forced into a compromise by the ENGO campaign and tried to adopt a new model of forestry. Working with the First Nations they sought to manage for biodiversity, and announced they would “phase out clear cutting”. Ultimately it would prove a not wholly successful experiment, as McB was folded into Weyerhauser in the upcoming years; yet it shaped the experiences of McB vice president Linda Coady, who became Vice President, Sustainability for Weyerhauser after the takeover. For their part, the ENGOs had learned a lot from the Clayoquot campaign. In particular, the campaign pioneered the use of a marketing campaign to attack McMillan Bloedel indirectly. Despite local resistance, The Sierra Club came to realize that they could win support for their campaign from international buyers of wood products. McMillan Bloedel and the other BC forestry companies relied heavily on exports to foreign markets, and those marketplaces had become sensitive to green issues. During the Clayoquot campaign The Sierra Club and other ENGOs had become adept at targeting these foreign markets to create boycotts against McMillan Bloedel. Moreover, the ENGOs had learned to coordinate their efforts and work collectively for their goals. Following the success they had enjoyed in Clayoquot, they were keen to put these newfound strengths to good use. The coastal region was large, many times the size of Clayoquot, and as yet relatively intact. If they attacked the logging industry early in this region, they had the chance to conserve a massive piece of the old growth forest (HJ).
Garnering Support for Alternative Visions of the GBRF: The International Markets Campaign When the government began its CCLRMP process in the early 1990s, they hoped to be able to create a consensual document with all of the key groups as signatories. Yet they were out of touch with what was happening in the ENGO, First Nations communities. The ENGOs, angry about the 2‐3% figure and afraid of being co‐opted by a process that was never going to deliver what they wanted, refused to participate at the talks. The First Nations, for their part, were mindful of the ongoing court action and cautious of making any commitments that could prejudice their claims and thus agreed to participate, but only as observers, and refused to recognize the authority of the CCLRMP to make decisions about lands that they still had a claim on. Thus, the early CCLRMP negotiations were carried out without two of the key stakeholder groups at the table, a situation that would soon be shown to be untenable. Instead of joining in with the CCLRMP, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club of BC, Rainforest Action Network and the other environmental groups began the campaign in the Great Bear Rainforest much like the Clayoquot campaign, with blockades that garnered attention in the local media and impeded logging operations in the region. However, they were no longer targeting McMillan Bloedel, who had only minor holdings in the area, but rather a host of important companies including Western Forest Product, International Forest Products, Weyerhaeuser and others. To take on such a large campaign the different groups created a coordinating organization, the Rainforest Solutions Project (RSP) that would allow them to work effectively as a coalition. There were also geographical features that made the Great Bear campaign different from its predecessor. Protesting was made more difficult, since the region was far less accessible than Clayoquot had Case Study: The Great Bear Rainforest Story
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been and thus innovative approaches were introduced. Although the Great Bear Rainforest campaign didn’t garner the same local media attention as had been seen in Clayoquot, the international community took notice. The second markets campaign involved high profile demonstrations at leading retail locations all over the world. Moreover, they introduced ‘virtual blockades’ where the ENGO’s monitored and tracked the logging happening in the GBR and posted pictures online to put pressure on buyers. By 1997, B&Q, the British hardware store had cancelled its contracts for BC wood and by 1999, the likes of Staples, Ikea, and Home Depot had followed suit. This campaign included the final piece in the puzzle, which was to rebrand the entire mid coast region to create an image that would resonate with the imagination of forest product consumers. The campaigners eventually came up with the name that would become permanently attached to the region – The Great Bear Rainforest. This moniker referred to the fact that the forests were home to a unique species of white Kermode bear known as the white spirit bear and it quickly caught on in the press. It also shifted the language being used about the region. It was no longer just a repository for wood, a valuable natural resource to be exploited; rather, it was a unique ecosystem and part of the natural heritage of the Earth. Just as it had in Clayoquot, the market campaign began to erode the forestry companies’ ability to do business effectively. Not only were profits lost (over $200 million in contracts were cancelled, Riddell 2009) as negative publicity began to mount up in key emerging markets such as Japan, key executives were forced to sink time into going on public relations trips abroad instead of focusing on running the day‐to‐day business of the company. Bill Dumont of Western Forest Products remarked at the time, “it’s hard to sell a four by four with a protester attached to it” (CL). Increasingly, the forestry industry became frustrated with the inability of the government’s CCLRMP to deliver a workable compromise that would allow them to run a viable business on the coast, and without the participation of the ENGOs this wasn’t likely to happen any time soon. With the industry facing multiple threats it was time for the executives to make difficult choices. First of all, that meant being willing to sit down and negotiate with the ENGOs. In order to meet the threat, the forestry industry created its own coordinating group, which would eventually become Coast Forest Conservation Initiative, recruiting Patrick Armstrong as their representative and Dan Johnson as a neutral negotiator/facilitator. Moreover they approached Linda Coady and McMillan Bloedel for help. Coady was initially reluctant to get involved, since she had her hands full struggling to make McB’s new economic model work in Clayoquot, but was reluctantly persuaded to join with the other companies in helping to negotiate a compromise. Coady was able to confirm to the other companies that the ENGOs did indeed pose a serious threat to their operations. While they had been dismissive of McB’s struggles in the past, and disparaging of her company’s efforts to rethink their economic model, the time had come for them to do the same thing, but first a truce had to be negotiated with the ENGOs. The environmental campaign was successful in more than just wringing concessions out of the industry however. It also managed to attract the support of some major US charitable foundations. In particular the Packard Foundation was excited about the possibility of working on a large‐scale project like the Great Bear Rainforest, they had a vision for a region wide sustainable ecological and economic model and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it (SR). Case Study: The Great Bear Rainforest Story
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Negotiation and Agreement The early negotiations between the industry and the environmentalists were tense affairs. The kinds of passions that had been stirred up by the Clayoquot campaign were not easily forgotten and the two groups looked on each other as bitter enemies. Rather than coming to consensus, the two parties spent their time hurling bitter recriminations and accusations at each other across the room. One participant likens the experience to slinging rocks at her opponents from behind a riot shield (HJ 2008). The two groups were simply entrenched in their traditional roles within the system. The role of the environmentalists had always been to criticize the foresters, who on their part dismissed the environmentalists as naive do‐gooders at best, and destructive criminals at worst. Moreover, even as the two groups negotiated, the forest companies continued to log in the Great Bear Rainforest, and the ENGO’s continued to attack them in the markets, which left both parties nursing fresh grievances at each meeting. In order to move forward, this pattern had to be broken. A skilled negotiator was contracted to enable dialogue between the two sectors, and environmental leaders began to access an array of training on topics that included leadership and negotiation, through the Hollyhock Leadership Institute. The members of these groups were not generally experienced negotiators, and the issue was deeply colored by mistrust and antipathy. The environmental movement was still largely inexperienced, though they had learned from Clayoquot, facing off against industry professionals was still a daunting challenge. The emphasis at Hollyhock was to go beyond confrontation, and how to find win‐win solutions ‐ and people like Jody Holmes took these lessons to heart. Through being introduced to mindfulness and meditation techniques, and Buddhist‐ inspired approaches to compassion for the ‘enemy’, they launched what they informally called the ‘love strategy’, an approach designed to shift them out of an us‐them dynamic, and to explore the innovative potentials in their opportunity to talk with their industry counterparts. The love strategy encompassed work that environmental leaders undertook on a personal level, in contrast to the way that the market campaign operated at the international level. The leaders tried different ‘thought exercises’ and practices outside of face‐to‐face negotiations, enabling them to see the perspective of those across the table. An example of this is that each of the ENGO negotiators chose one person on the other side of the table and found one personal quality about them that they liked. This helped them begin to see industry representatives as people and not just representatives of an industry they despised. In addition, they were exposed to mindfulness techniques to enable them to respond to the inevitable ‘triggering’ that might happen during negotiations, and continue to act in a resourceful and respectful manner. As negotiations continued, this last resolve occasionally proved difficult, but when they felt frustrated, environmental negotiators would make use of breaks to leave the room, supporting each other to maintain this humanizing stance. The negotiations were still incredibly tense and oppositional at times, however these techniques enabled a shift in the approach of the environmentalists so that negotiated solutions could be found. The industry side had never seen anything quite like it. Mostly men with long careers in industry, they were used to tough negotiating tactics of the kind that had brought about the US‐ Canadian Softwood Lumber Agreement. In these negotiations they were confronted by mostly Case Study: The Great Bear Rainforest Story
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young women facing them down, yet refusing to be drawn in to confrontation, and it left them at a loss as to how they should proceed. Linda Coady led a faction of progressive thinkers on the industry side (CL). Coady’s own relationship with the ENGO movement had been radically transformed through a series of chance meetings with Greenpeace campaigner Karen Mahon. Like Coady, Mahon lived in Kitsilano (a Vancouver neighborhood) and had recently had a child at about the same time as Coady. The two of them met occasionally, while pushing their strollers around and would discuss forestry, sometimes shouting at each other while their children played in the background. Over time though, their relationship developed into a quiet back channel for direct communication in part through the humanizing influence of their shared experiences. Coady then, had become converted to the possibility of building a new cooperative relationship and she wasn’t alone. Others on the industry sides were also determined that the talks should succeed and were prepared to allow their representatives leeway to make sure that it happened. The early negotiations finally did succeed. A truce of sorts was signed. The ENGOs gave the industry a list of key valleys wherein logging would have to cease and moreover they commonly resolved that the 2‐3% figure would have to be put aside. In return, the industry got a commitment from the ENGOs that they would call a ceasefire in their markets campaigns, would work to find a realistic consensus and that they would sit down at the CCLRMP. Finally, government capitulated as well and agreed in a letter to the ENGOs that the limit they had imposed on protected areas could be broken and so the settlement became official. A breakthrough had been achieved (HJ 2008).
The Great Bear Rainforest Coalitions Although the ENGOs agreed to return to the table, this did not immediately resolve the problems of the CCLRMP, nor did it settle all of their differences with the forest companies. With the ENGOs and the companies both present at the planning table, the arguments between their two camps now threatened to derail the consensus building instead. Government had in fact lost control of the process, and the other parties at the table complained that nothing could be achieved. It was suggested that the companies and environmentalists needed to go off on their own and negotiate separately so that the main table could do its business, and so a series of bilateral talks was opened. Furthermore, there were those who were unhappy at the truce that industry had struck with the environmentalists on both sides of the debate. Many of those whose jobs were at stake in the debate saw themselves as betrayed by the companies they served, and soon Linda Coady too was burning in effigy on local pyres. Among the larger environmental community, for its part, there were plenty of people who believed the GBRF ENGOs had done a deal with the devil. Their aim remained to halt all old growth logging in the forest, something that was never going to happen if you allowed the industry any legitimacy. Soon, everyone in the two party negotiations was feeling the backlash. Perversely though, this may have helped to cement their growing accord. Their mutual feeling of being besieged pushed the industry and ENGO representatives together and increasingly they began to build up a stockpile of trust and social capital that allowed the talks Case Study: The Great Bear Rainforest Story
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to move forward. Over time, this burgeoning relationship between two erstwhile enemies began to solidify and eventually turned into the Joint Solutions Project, a group containing both industry and ENGO representatives working together to find a workable solution in the GBRF. This project also found the support of the newly created Tides Canada Foundation, which agreed to host the group. Tides Canada had indeed emerged during the GBRF process and contained founders who had worked with the Hollyhock Leadership Institute who saw the possibility of playing yet another vital role in the evolution of an historic resolution. They played a vital role in helping to fund the early work of the JSP, allowing the ENGOs and industry to concentrate on forming a working relationship. Meanwhile the David Suzuki Foundation had also been building successful relationships with its First Nations partners, and they, seeing the success that the industry and ENGO coalitions were having, created Turning Point. At the heart of Turning Point was an agreement that committed its signatory First Nations to working together in the GBRF, and also to promoting ecological sustainability. Turning Point became an important player in the debate, launching a series of bilateral talks of its own, with government, the industry, and the environmentalists. In this way, the process of relationship building and shifting began by the industry and ENGOs was continued and extended. The historic two‐party alliance between the government and industry that had dominated the coastal forests was being broken up and replaced by a whole host of new relationships that were forming between the different groups. The Suzuki Foundation’s strategy to support First Nations had attracted funding as well, which could now be used to keep the lengthy negotiations processes alive. Government too was not totally unresponsive to these new developments. Although officially they remained committed to the CCLRMP process and outside of the bilateral negotiations, unofficially, the Agriculture and Lands Minister Pat Bell was in contact with the industry and ENGOs, keeping abreast of developments so that when the JSP eventually returned to the CCLRMP with a new proposal, it did not come as a complete shock to the province. The trick that remained was to decide what that new proposal was going to look like.
Finding a WinWin Solution for the Great Bear Rainforest The new coalitions gave the different groups invaluable fora in which to develop their ideas for the GBRF, and several competing plans soon emerged. First to announce itself was, of course, the government’s strategy. They had made their terms clear designing the parameters and limitations of the CCLRMP, effectively, theirs was a status quo suggestion, one that would allow logging to continue as it had done, while giving First Nations a greater involvement in the process that still went nowhere near as far as Turning Point was demanding. The First Nations in fact, wanted to be recognized as independent governments, equal to the province, and refused to recognize the CCLRMP until this condition was met. The industry for its part, desperately needed to be profitable. While some of its members may have privately hankered for a return to the past, many also recognized that this was unfeasible. The environmentalists were pushing for implementation of a conservation‐biology based plan, and a model of eco‐forestry to produce Case Study: The Great Bear Rainforest Story
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high‐end ‘green’ wood products, but this too had its problems. Coady, indeed, was sure that the market simply wasn’t there to support such a plan. Moreover, the ENGOs recognized that a high percentage of the Great Bear region would have to be protected from logging. There was a desperate need for solutions that could give everyone a piece of what they wanted. Most importantly, any solution had to be accepted by all parties or it would ultimately fail in practice. Firstly it was agreed that any new plan for the forest would need to be based in good science, and what’s more, it needed to be science that all four parties could agree on. The idea for a Coastal Information Team (CIT) was born. It would be a group comprised of scientists chosen by all four camps and would be tasked with coming up with consensual advice to the political process. Working through this arrangement would help avoid a research war with both sides accusing each other of using biased research data. Still, a solution needed to be found that both the whole CIT and the rest of the interest groups could agree on. Part of the solution was the Conservation Areas Design. Essentially, this provided a top‐ down tool to look at the historical impacts of logging and the requirements of large carnivores, large‐scale ecological integrity, and maintenance of evolutionary processes. It created a scientifically sound means of assessing what percentage of the rainforest needed protecting, and which areas were most key to achieving sustainability. However, it also demonstrated that the percentages would be high, in the range of forty to sixty percent. How could this be sold to the other stakeholders? Facing this dilemma, Jody Holmes turned to the ideas of Herb Hammond. Hammond had been affiliated with the environmental movement for some time, promoting the concept of ecosystem based management. Ecosystem based management has by now become an established norm within natural resource management, though still talked more about in the literature than actually practiced on the ground. However, Jody Holmes believed that they could help to develop a common ground between the different parties in the GBRF, in particular because EBM took a whole systems approach to management, and was able to emphasize human wellbeing as a goal alongside environmental sustainability. It seemed like the perfect complement to the Conservation Areas Design. For this reason, she looked over Hammond’s material and began to rework them into a form that she believed the other parties could accept. It was a slow process, but she stuck with it, presenting her ideas over and over again. Reaction was very mixed. The government was reluctant, EBM seemed to go beyond what they had intended to be the mandate of the CCLRMP, which they were still trying to control, while the First Nations became divided over the issue. For those First Nations involved with Turning Point, they had been linking their traditional land management to ecosystem‐based management goals from early in the process. For other First Nations who had not been participating, it was a distraction. Many of the First Nations still saw the ENGOs as only another interest group with no stake in seeing them prosper and initially refused to support EBM. Even large parts of the environmental community were against it, declaring that it would fail to offer adequate protection to the old growth forests, that it was logging with a “green‐wash”, that what was needed was an end to old growth logging and more protected areas.
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However, for the industry, EBM seemed to contain something that they could use. Since it emphasizes human wellbeing, they were quick to point out that this should include corporate viability, since the corporations served human wellbeing by providing jobs and income. The environmentalists countered that this was only true within certain economic models, but that stripping all of the wood and shipping it abroad to be processed didn’t provide much in the way of human wellbeing. Still, out of these early disagreements the two parties could begin to build a shared conception of what EBM could mean. For the industry, the idea of corporate wellbeing was reassuring. Moreover, the ENGOs were talking about adding value to the cut wood. With the market situation as it was, the industry was actually losing money on the trees they were cutting. By cutting less, but at higher rate of return per felled tree, the possibility of turning a profit did exist. Over a long period of time, the companies were eventually brought round to support EBM. Even so, it might never have come to fruition without the support of the First Nations and government; a crucial piece of the GBRF puzzle was still missing.
WinWin Solutions: The Economic Dimension Among those who realized what that piece was, was Merran Smith, a veteran of Clayoquot and forest campaigner with the Sierra Club and later with ForestEthics. In addition to her environmental campaigning, Smith had done humanitarian relief work in Latin America. Unlike most people of the environmental movement, she was no stranger to the human dimension of the problem of the GBRF and what she saw in the First Nations communities on the central coast convinced her that the real core of the problem lay there. Taking to heart what she had heard from one of the First Nations elders, Smith came to argue that there could be no resolution between the parties unless somebody urgently addressed the need for economic development and human wellbeing in the First Nations communities. This did not mean logging. The First Nations had failed to profit from the logging that had been going in BC already. To Smith it meant sustainable, local economic development and economic diversification. If the cut was going to be reduced, as it had to be, then other jobs needed generating on the coast. In saying this, Smith was speaking directly to the First Nations’ concerns; the hurdle was how to address them. The answer, in one sense, was simple. Seed money would be needed to fund new economic development projects in First Nations communities. Economic analysts were hired, who came up with a figure of $120 million, which was the amount that would be needed to get alternative economic development going in these small and remote communities. In an unprecedented approach, initial seed funding for investment was committed by a consortium of environmental charitable foundations. The remainder of this money was raised by both the BC Provincial and Federal governments. The fund was christened the Coast Opportunities Fund, and was to be managed by a board that included First Nations, environmental representatives, and business development experts. Along with this fund, came the promise, long looked for by the First Nations, that future negotiations between them and the province would be conducted on a government‐to‐ government basis as equals, recognizing their unresolved claims to rights and title on their traditional lands. Taken as a package, Protected Areas, EBM, CIT, the fund and government‐to‐ government recognition, provided a deal which the First Nations, industry and ENGOs could all Case Study: The Great Bear Rainforest Story
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agree to. The last remaining piece was to convince the government to sign off on it; the time had come to return to the CCLRMP. Holmes and the other negotiators made it clear that the package agreement was one that could not be split up into its parts, it had to be accepted wholesale or not at all in order to retain the support of all three groups. The reaction from the rest of the CCLRMP was fury. The agreement went far beyond anything the government had envisioned for the CCLRMP, and the other stakeholders at the table reacted strongly at what they saw as attempts by the industry and ENGOs to strong arm them. However, time was running out, 2001 was an election year, the NDP was coming to the end of its second term in government. The CCLRMP process was supposed to be completed, but in reality, was seemingly no nearer to a resolution than when it started. To the amazement of many at the table, the government eventually agreed to sign an interim agreement, endorsing the principles already agreed to by the other three major parties. In 2001, this became the GBRF interim agreement, which pointed to a way forward for the region1.
Leveraging: Turning the Interim Agreement into a Reality The interim agreement represented on paper a dramatic shift in the GBRF system. EBM had never been adopted for publicly managed forests before in BC, and nobody, not even Hammond, had tried it at the kind of scale it was to be used for here. The economic vision, for its part, was a fundamental re‐imagining of the economy of the central coast, attempting to break the region’s historical dependence on resource exploitation and to build a genuinely green and sustainable economy, termed a “conservation‐based” economy. Finally, the First Nations new relationship with government, establishing them as a major legitimate source of authority in the area, was unprecedented for BC First Nations and indicative of how much the traditional relationships between the power blocs in the region had changed. It remained, however, to turn all of this promise into reality. The election came and went with the NDP giving way to the Liberals. It was generally agreed in the new government that the CCLRMP had failed. The interim agreement tipped the scale much too far and took too much power out of the hands of government (BJ). Just as they had decided after Clayoquot, they resolved that what had happened in the GBRF must not be allowed to spread. Further, the consensus model of the CCLRMP was to be dropped. Further negotiations to develop land use plans for the north and central coasts would be conducted behind closed doors on a bilateral basis, chiefly between the province and the individual First Nations. However, 1
On April 4th, 2001, an agreement involving forest companies, environmental groups, First Nations, and the Province, protected 20 valleys (600,000 hectares), deferred logging in 88 more wilderness valleys (900,000 hectares), and advanced ecosystem‐based management principles throughout the region pending further planning. Environmental groups agreed to cease targeting companies operating in the Great Bear Rainforest through international markets campaigns. Signatories committed to mitigation and transition funding for workers and communities, and established a multidisciplinary team of experts to conduct region‐wide biophysical and socioeconomic research to inform final decisions at regional land use planning tables. Furthermore, in an agreement that also included the Haida First Nation (of the Queen Charlotte Islands), eight First Nations governments supported ecosystem‐based management in their traditional territories, and signed a protocol with the Province giving them the right to complete their own land use plans.
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with all of these caveats in place, the Liberals were prepared to accept the results of the agreement, indeed, with everyone else supporting it they would have found it difficult to do otherwise. Still, disputes followed thick and fast, mostly concerning the definition of EBM. Although it had been accepted in principle, there was no consensus on what it actually involved, and government was trying to reserve the right to decide that for themselves. Increasingly they preferred to leave the industry and the ENGOs out of the new government‐to‐government negotiations they were having with the First Nations over the latter’s land claims. Initially, this frustrated the two parties who had become used to driving the process themselves and now seemed to see all of their hard won ground slipping away from them. The early years following the interim agreement, 2002, 2003, were filled with reports about how it had failed, and the forest was still being destroyed by logging (Suzuki Foundation). However, eventually, the JSP resolved itself to getting on with the work of defining their vision of the CCLRMP. They still had the CIT, which was busily researching the forest and coming up with an official version of what EBM was to mean, based on the scientific consensus that could be arrived at there. Holmes pushed the CIT hard. What she needed first and foremost was a figure for how much of the forest would need to be protected, a simple number that she could feed back to the CCLRMP. Initially reluctant because of the uncertainty, the group was eventually persuaded by the idea that the figure they arrived at was not expected to be a definitive answer, only an experimental one that could be modified over time; they were eventually prepared to say that 44%‐70% of the forest needed protecting. The question then, was deciding where that 70% was going to come from and where logging could be allowed to continue and so the CIT focused on developing a number of different scenarios to answer that question. Yet the real issue was with the coastal opportunities fund. Without delivering something tangible on the human wellbeing front, EBM was a dead duck and some of the First Nations were duly skeptical. Holmes remembers being told by one leader that he would eat his hat if they managed to actually deliver the money to the fund, and that only then, would he be prepared to support EBM. It was down to Merran Smith, and the opportunities fund to deliver the fuel that the process now most urgently needed, money. The aim of the Coastal Opportunities Fund was to find $60 million and to convince the provincial and federal government to match it to reach their $120 million total. Coady calls it ‘an audacious amount of money’ (personal communication). On their side though, the ENGOs had the foundations that had supported them from the beginning, the Packard Foundation and Tides, and they soon won the support of others. The Hewlett Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, and others joined the table to give them a boost towards their total. Sooner than anyone had expected, the $60 million was raised from US and Canadian foundations, and individual donors. The remaining battle was to get the government to match the total. Finally, in 2007 their efforts succeeded and the target was met. The environmentalists had provided $60 million, the province matched $30 million and the federal government took care of the rest. It was a move that fundamentally changed the way that people viewed the environmental movement. They had weighed in with a serious amount of money, proving their commitment to Case Study: The Great Bear Rainforest Story
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human wellbeing to those that had doubted them and winning the respect of both government and First Nations. With their success at leveraging resources to support their vision of the GBRF, the environmentalists demanded to be taken seriously. Furthermore, “conservation financing” on this scale and on public lands had not been attempted before, and was providing a new model. This success was matched at the CIT. This group produced an EBM handbook which won grudging acceptance from all parties, even though the government continued to look for loopholes in the agreement. Yet with the CIT on their side, the JSP were able to use the authority of the scientists in their favor and the handbook was ultimately accepted by the restyled central coast planning table and the north coast‐planning table. The government resistance also began to evaporate as the pine beetle epidemic hit the forests of the inland regions of BC, devastating the timber stands and those communities that relied on them for their jobs. The pine beetle has made it painfully clear that BC can no longer rely on resource extraction to provide it with jobs income. The diversified economy and sustainable development models of the GBRF may be the only way forward for the whole province. Luckily, through the efforts of all those involved with this process, the province had got a head start and if the GBRF experiment is successful, it may soon be providing a model for the whole province to follow. On March 31st 2009, the deadline for the implementation of EBM passed. As of this date, 50% of the GBRF was securely protected. This is still 20% short of the highest figure generated by the CIT, but a long way from the 2‐3% initially approved by the province. The Coast Opportunities Fund is ready to start spending its $120 million. Some has already been allocated, but much still needs to be done. Turning Point and the JSP are working hard with First Nations to develop projects that will make use of the money. Shellfish aquaculture is looking promising and several new businesses will be opening this year. Ecotourism is another avenue that is being explored, as is carbon offsetting and trading. The GBRF has come a long way from the kind of resource extraction economy that had been an important source of employment in the area for decades. The First Nations have continued their negotiations with the government, and some treaties have already been concluded, while others are still in the works. Whatever else happens, it is certain that First Nations communities will have a big part to play in the future of the region. Most of the CIT funding is going towards projects run for and by First Nations. Both economically and politically, they will decide the future of the region. The GBRF is still far from a finished project. It is an ongoing revolution. New challenges are constantly needing to be met, particularly as far as the human wellbeing dimension is concerned, and the pine beetle, although not yet a serious presence on the coast, is a threat that cannot be ignored. The hope is, that with the new relationships that have developed on the coast, the new spirit of collaboration and innovation, and the new emphasis on diversification and managing for low risk, the GBRF has become a system that is resilient to the shocks and disruptions it will inevitably continue to face. The success that has been won so far cannot be denied, now is the time for the coast to live up to its promise.
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Key Elements of the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement: •
Permanent protection – 5 million acres
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New parks ‐ 3.3 million acres
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Previous parks ‐ 1 million acres
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New nologging zones ‐ 736,000 acres
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EcosystemBased Management – 21 million acres
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$120 Million for conservation economy
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First Nations approve all plans/gain government status
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International Marketplace shift away from endangered forest products
•
Model used in conservation efforts in Chile, Boreal Forest, and USA
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List of Abbreviations BC: British Columbia CCLRMP: Central Coast Land and Resource Management Plan CIT: Coastal Information Team CFCI: Coast Forest Conservation Initiative EBM: Ecosystem based management ENGOs: Environmental non‐government organisations GBRF: Great Bear Rainforest JSP: Joint Solutions Project LRMP: Land and Resource Management Plan McB: McMillan Bloedel RSP: Rainforest Solutions Project TSA: Timber supply area
List of Organization Memberships RSP: ForestEthics, Greenpeace, Sierra Club of BC CFCI: Canadian Forest Products, International Forest Products, Catalyst Paper, Western Forest Products, BC Timber Sales JSP: CFCI and RSP and Rainforest Action Network Turning Point: Gitga’at First Nation, Haida Nation, Haisla Nation, Heiltsuk Nation, Kitasoo/Xaixais First Nation, Metlakatla First Nation, Old Massett Village Council, Skidegate Band Council
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References BC Economy: http://www.guidetobceconomy.org/major_industries/foresty.htm BC Stats http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/pubs/exp/exp0011.pdf Drever, Ronnie: ‘A Cut Above: Ecological Principles for Sustainable Forestry on BC’s Coast’. Suzuki Foundation report summary http://www.davidsuzuki.org/forests/solutions/Principles.asp Save the Great Bear: http://www.savethegreatbear.org/theplace/Wildlife/salmon Suzuki Foundation: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Campaigns_and_Programs/Canadian_Rainforests/News_Rele ases/newsforestry04300501.asp http://www.policy.forestry.ubc.ca/rainforest.html Wagner, W. L. 2001. Excising the Common Wealth? A Study of Public Sector Intervention in the British Columbia Forest Industry, 19801996. University of Victoria PhD Dissertation. Personal Communications: HJ, CL, GI, BJ and others in March 2008 HJ, MR, DT in 2009
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Author Biographies Ola Tjornbo Ola Tjornbo is currently a McConnell Fellow at SiG@Waterloo. Ola has been deeply engaged in SiG’s case writing project, helping to develop a SiG case writing template to assist researchers and practitioners in utilizing a social innovation theoretical framework to look at and understand examples of innovative projects. Ola has also begun to put the template into practice, developing two teaching cases based on a series of qualitative interviews conducted in British Columbia in April 2008. Aside from this case study on the Great Bear Rainforest, he is also working on developing a case study on Ecotrust, an organization committed to helping build a ‘conservation economy’ in BC. These are both examples of how social innovators are combining the goals of environmental protection and community economic development to build overall sustainability. Frances Westley
Frances Westley is the J.W. McConnell Chair in Social Innovation at the University of Waterloo. Her research, writing, and teaching centers on social innovation in complex problem domains, with particular emphasis on leadership and managing strategic change. Her most recent book entitled Getting to Maybe (Random House, 2006) focuses on the inter‐relationship of individual and system dynamics in social innovation and transformation. Dr. Westley received her PhD and MA in Sociology from McGill University. Darcy Riddell Darcy Riddell has 15 years experience working in the field of sustainability and social change as a strategist, campaigner, consultant and facilitator. She is currently a McConnell Fellow at SiG@Waterloo and a PhD student in Ecological and Social Sustainability at the University of Waterloo. Darcy’s primary research interest is in understanding the relationship of social innovation to human psychological development, and the dynamics between emergent worldviews and institutional‐systemic innovations. She is working to develop, apply and share more comprehensive approaches to social innovation and sustainability. She has a BSc. in Geography/Environmental Studies, and an M.A. in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness.
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About Social Innovation Generation Social Innovation Generation (SiG) is a collaborative partnership between the Montreal‐ based J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, the University of Waterloo, the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto, and the PLAN Institute in Vancouver. It seeks to address Canada’s social and ecological challenges by creating a culture of continuous social innovation. The project is designed to enhance the conditions for social innovation in Canada, including providing practical new support for social innovators in cultivating organizations and initiatives. The SiG project is focused very specifically on social innovations that have durability, impact and scale. Our interest is on profound change processes and our overall aim is to encourage effective methods of addressing persistent social problems on a national scale. To find out more, please visit www.sigeneration.ca
About University of Waterloo SiG@Waterloo is an important partner in the national SiG collaboration and is housed in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo, recognized as one of Canada's most innovative universities. In just half a century, the University of Waterloo, located at the heart of Canada's Technology Triangle, has become one of Canada’s leading comprehensive universities with 28,000 full and part‐time students in undergraduate and graduate programs. In the next decade, the university is committed to building a better future for Canada and the world by championing innovation and collaboration to create solutions relevant to the needs of today and tomorrow. Waterloo, as home to the world’s largest post‐secondary co‐operative education program, embraces its connections to the world and encourages enterprising partnerships in learning, research, and discovery.
To find out more, please visit www.uwaterloo.ca
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SiG@Waterloo 195 King St. W., Suite 202 Kitchener, ON N2G 1B1 T: 519 888 4490 F: 519 578 7168 W: www.sig.uwaterloo.ca
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