By Valerie Langer
Introduction by Delores Broten
It was in March 2000 that the first progress was announced on the Great Bear Rainforest, when eco-groups abandoned blockade lines and market campaigns for collaborative talks. The Watershed Sentinel report read: “Sierra Club of BC, the Coastal Rainforest Coalition, and Greenpeace confirmed that they were near agreement with six logging companies having timber rights on the central coast for an 18-month moratorium on logging the ‘largest remaining tracts of temperate rainforest left in the world.’In exchange, the groups would lift their effective European market campaign, hoping that the breathing space would allow time for changes in forest practices.”
The ensuing negotiations have been as protracted as they were controversial. Criticism among BC environmental groups included disappointment about a lack of transformation from industrial forestry and fears that if the cut were lowered on the coast, it would simply be displaced to other forests in the province.
In the face of market pressures, BC’s Liberal government decided to honour commitments for protected areas and, in 2006, announced that one-third of the Central and North Coast would be fully protected from logging. A $120 million investment fund for First Nations economic development has been raised through government and foundation money. Plans for Ecosystem Based Management (EBM) are slowly being put into operation, with 50% of the natural level of this temperate rainforest now off-limits to logging and the annual allowable cut lowered by up to 20% as tenures are renewed.
The conservation legacy of the GBR deal is undoubted, but nonetheless, the complicated agreement has run into some rough water. Greenpeace, Sierra Club BC, and ForestEthics – the groups still at the table a decade later – are sounding the alarm over lack of government action on mapping the habitats of “focal species” so they can be protected while preparing for the next big conservation step. ForestEthic’s Valerie Langer reports on the situation today:
Some actions are a leap of faith. The Great Bear Rainforest agreements are in that category. The leap in 2006 was that a new approach to forest management – Ecosystem Based Management – could be implemented on British Columbia’s coast to achieve ecological integrity of the forests concurrent with initiatives to establish high levels of human well-being. The whole initiative was then anchored by protecting 2.1 million hectares (1/3 of the region) from logging (1.7 million hectares in newly protected conservancies and biodiversity areas, adding to the 0.4 million hectares in established parks).
It’s one thing to say “Ecosystem Based Management” but another to figure out the mechanics of doing it. The devil is in the details, and where broad, altruistic statements either hit the road or crash and burn.
The 2006 agreement included two goals for Ecosystem Based Management: maintaining regional ecological integrity – measured primarily as maintaining 70% of the natural level of old growth (aka Range of Natural Variation, RONV) – and achieving high levels of human well-being. An implementation structure includes a forum where First Nations and provincial representatives make political/strategic decisions around land use and implementation. Additionally, three ENGOs and five companies participate by making recommendations to decision makers through technical/science tables.
Legally Binding Objectives
In March 2009, after protracted discussions, an EBM system was developed assigning ecosystem representation percentages to landscape units (e.g., landscape units in conservancies at 100% RONV, and others managed to maintain 70, 50, and 30% RONV, averaged out regionally). These, plus other site-level management changes, were established in legally binding land use objectives (new rules for logging in the Great Bear). While there are specific improvements at the site level (stream buffers, monumental cedar protection, etc.), the major change is the amount of forest that can’t be logged under EBM.
But there was a hitch in 2009. Neither industry nor First Nations representatives nor the province were willing to move immediately to the goal of 70% RONV regionally, saying the social and economic costs would be too high. With First Nations and industry claiming the reduction in cut would be too dramatic, we could not get agreement to increase conservation to ecological goals for natural old growth levels.
Given the situation, a compromise agreement was made in March 2009 to increase legally binding conservation management to 50% RONV (representing all ecosystem types). Part of the conditions to extend the implementation time was a work-plan, including a reserve design to map and set aside from logging specific areas of the forest for old growth and critical focal species habitat. Concurrently, the province undertook to deal with economic barriers to implementation (e.g., tenure allocation, finalizing human well-being initiatives) so that the shift to management for full ecological integrity could be achievable by 2014.
The legally binding land use objectives have had significant ecological gains in addition to protected areas. The new legal requirements result in an additional 700,000 hectares of Great Bear Rainforest off limits to logging. Yet, the rainforest’s integrity remains at risk. The move to 50% RONV slows the rate of degradation but does not constitute low risk to the ecosystem. The best available science says another 12% of the forest will have to be conserved or else there will be a continual decline in ecosystem health.
Key Species’ Habitat
In the interim to the next conservation step, we need assurances that key species’ habitat is not lost and no ecosystem type is logged beyond the “tipping point.” At this stage, the interim measures – particularly the reserve design and identification of key species habitats – are bogged down and critically delayed. Provincial leadership is required to deal with these delays.
The province also has to coordinate a resolution to economic barriers that were identified in 2009 as preventing the move to full ecosystem based management. In particular, the impact of conservation thus far has reduced the allowable cut by up to 20%. Full EBM is estimated to put another 400,000 ha off limits to logging.
Tenure Reallocation
Part of the First Nations’ strategy is to gain more access and control over tenures in their territories. This means more players are now chasing less wood. A method to problem-solve a fair reallocation of tenures has been talked about for over a year, but without significant action. Until a tenure reallocation process is underway and human well-being initiatives – from Reconciliation Agreements to capacity development to shellfish farms – start hitting the ground in the First Nations communities, there is a risk that decision makers will resist any changes that further reduce logging.
We have hit the crux of ecosystem based management. This was predicted. A $120 million fund was set up to enable the transition to a conservation economy, and we all knew the logging cut would have to come down. While the Great Bear Rainforest agreements are anomalies in a generally appalling provincial forest policy context, the province did make a socially and environmentally important global commitment to develop a model in this one place that the world could learn from.
What needs to be learned is how we manage ourselves within the ecosystems’ limits. No more excuses, no backing off the promise. Too much that is important to millions upon millions of us, is at stake: from the rich forest to proving that we can make the shift to a conservation economy at a significant scale to creating a new system of governance that acknowledges First Nations’ rights and title. The way to manage forestry for ecosystem integrity has been, in large part, figured out. The holdback to doing it fully now is that problem-solving the intersecting economic pressures has not been prioritized. Success in the Great Bear – that is, creating a durable conservation solution – rests on the province and First Nations to negotiate human well-being initiatives that allow communities and industry to adapt to a new reality on the coast. It can and must be done.
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[From WS September/October 2010]
