Abstract
This paper describes the emergence of a de-centered and privatized mode of governance in the Canadian forest sector. Using deliberative democratic theory as a descriptive foundation, it explores two key social facts that are arguably central to any historical analysis of this trend. First, increasing cultural pluralism challenges contemporary society to create new institutional arrangements that can incorporate a much larger, and often contested, array of public values into decision-making processes. Second, as management systems become more complex and science-driven, decision makers are finding it increasingly difficult to resolve issues of uncertainty and conflicting scientific evidence. De-centered forms of public participation provide important opportunities for government and industry to overcome these contemporary challenges, but certain side effects are also apparent. From the steering tactics of sponsoring agencies and corporations to the “ghettoizing” of environmental discourses, several implications are discussed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aberta Council for Sustainable Communities and the Environment (ACSCE). (2003). Alberta Forest Community Coalition (AFCC). Home Page. Accessible at http://www.forestcommunity.ca/.
Aberta Environmental Protection. (1992). Special Places 2000: Alberta’s Natural Heritage. Edmonton, AB: Alberta Environmental Protection.
Aberta Environment. (2002). Integrated Resource Management in Alberta – A Thumbnail History. Accessible at http://www3.gov.ab.ca/env/irm/docs/history.pdf.
Aberta Wilderness Association (AWA). (2000). Alberta Falls Short of its Commitments. Accessible at http://albertawilderness.ca/News/NR2000/NR000705/NR000705_2.pdf.
Auld, G., & Bull, G. Q. (2003). The institutional design of forest certification standards initiatives and its influence on the role of science: The case of forest genetic resources. Journal of Environmental Management 69:, 47–62.
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: towards a new modernity. London: Sage.
Beierle, T. C., & Cayford, J. (2002). Democracy and practice: public participation in environmental decisions. Washington, DC: Resources for the future.
Bohman, J. (1996). Public deliberation: pluralism, complexity and democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Brunner, R. D., Colburn, C. H., Cromley, C. M., Klein, R. A., & Olson, E. A. (2002). Finding common ground: Governance and natural resources in the American West. New Haven, CT: Yale.
Canadian Council of Forest Ministers (CCFM). (1995). Defining sustainable forest management: a Canadian approach to criteria and indicators. Ottawa: CCFM C&I Secretariat, natural resources Canada.
Canadian Council of Forest Ministers (CCFM). (2003). Defining sustainable forest management in Canada. Ottawa: criteria and indicators 2003. CCFM C&I Secretariat, Natural Resources Canada.
Canadian Standards Association (CSA). (2003). Z809-02. Sustainable forest management: requirements and guidance. Accessible at http://www.csa.ca/%5Crepository%5Cgroup%5CZ809-02july.pdf.
Canadian Sustainable Forestry Certification Coalition (CSFCC) (2005). Certification intentions in Canada. Accessible at http://www.sfms.com/status.htm#intentions.
Carrow, R. (1999). Canada’s model forest program: Challenges for phase II. The forestry chronicle, 75, 73–80.
Cashore, B. (2002). Legitimacy and the privatization of environmental governance: how non-state market-driven (NSMD) governance systems gain rule-making authority. Governanc, 15, 503–529.
Cashore, B., & Vertinsky, I. (2000). Policy networks and firm behaviour: governance systems and firm responses to external demands for sustainable forest management. Policy sciences, 33, 1–30.
Cashore, B., Auld, G., & Newsom, D. (2003). Governing through markets: forest certification and the emergence of non-state authority. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Christiansen-Ruffman, L., & Stuart, B. (1977). Actors and processes in citizen participation: negative aspects of reliance on professionals. in B. Sadler, ed., Involvement and environment (Volume 1). Edmonton, AB: Environment Council of Alberta.
Dahl, R. (1989). Democracy and its critics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Davidson, D. J., & MacKendrick, N. A. (2004). All dressed up with nowhere to go: the discourse of ecological modernization in Alberta. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 41, 47–65.
Dorcey, A. H. J., & McDaniels, T. (2001). Great expectations, mixed results: trends in citizen involvement in canadian environmental governance. in E. A. Parson, ed., Governing the environment: persistent challenges, uncertain innovations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Drushka, K. (2003). Canada’s forests: a history. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Dryzek, J., & Torgerson, D. (1993). Editorial: Democracy and the policy sciences: a progress report. Policy Sciences, 26, 127–137.
Dryzek, J. S. (2000). Deliberative democracy and beyond: liberals, critics, contestations. New York: Oxford University Press.
Eisner, M. A. (2004). Corporate environmentalism, regulatory reform, and industry self-regulation: toward genuine regulatory reinvention in the united states. Governance, 17, 145–167.
Fine, G. A., & Harrington, B. (2004). Tiny publics: small groups and civil society. Sociological Theory, 22, 341–356.
Fischer, F. (2000). Citizens, experts, and the environment: the politics of local knowledge. Durham, SC: Duke University Press.
Forester, J., ed. (1985). Critical Theory and Public Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fraser, N. (1992). Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In C. Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Friedmann, J. (1973). Retracking America: a Theory of Transactive Planning. New York: Doubleday Anchor.
Funtowicz, S., & Ravetz, J. R. (1985). Three types of risk assessment. in C. Whipple and V. T. Covello, eds., Risk Analysis in the Private Sector. New York: Plenum.
Funtowicz, S., & Ravetz, J. R. (1994). Emergent complex systems. Futures 26, 568–582.
Gary, G. J., Enzer, M. J., & Kusel, J. eds. (2001). Understanding community-based forest ecosystem management. New York: Hawarth Press.
Habermas, J. (1996). Between facts and norms: contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hajer, M. A. (1995). The Politics of environmental discourse: ecological modernization and the policy process. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hajer, M. (2003). Policy without polity? Policy analysis and the institutional void. Policy Sciences, 36, 175–195.
Hibbard, M., & Madsen, J. (2003). Environmental resistance to place-based collaboration in the U.S. west. Society and Natural Resources, 16, 703–718.
Jasanoff, S. (2003). Technologies of humility: citizen participation in governing science. Minerva, 41, 223–244.
Kaga, M. (2002). Provincial regulation of natural resource exploitation. Canada-United States Law Journal 28, 357–368.
Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lash, J. (2002). People and ecosystems: the fraying web of life. Isuma, 3, 20–24.
Lazar, A. (2003). The canadian forest products industry’s emerging industrial model of sustainability. The Forestry Chronicle, 79, 769–773.
Ludwig, D., Hilborn, R., & Waters, C. (1993). Uncertainty, resource exploitation, and conservation: lessons from history. Science, 5104, 17–36.
McCloskey, M. (1996). The skeptics: collaboration has its limits. High Country News 28.
McFarlane, B. L., & Boxall, P. C. (2000). Forest values and attitudes of the public, environmentalists, professional foresters, and members of public advisory groups in Alberta. Information Report NOR-X-37. Edmonton, AB: Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre.
McKenzie, J. I. (2002). Environmental Politics in Canada: managing the commons into the twenty-first century. New York: Oxford University Press.
Murphy, P. (1992). Forestry Issues in Canada. Redovisning av seminarium den 11 maj 1992. Anordnat av Kungl. Skogs- och Lantbruksakademien. Stockholm.
Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001). Re-thinking science: knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Paehlke, R. (2000). Environmentalism in one country: Canadian environmental policy in an era of globalization. Policy Studies Journal, 28, 160–175.
Parkins, J. (2002). Forest management and advisory groups in Alberta: an empirical critique of an emergent public sphere. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 27, 163–184.
Parson, E. A. (2001). Environmental trends: a challenge to canadian governance. In E. A. Parson, ed., Governing the Environment: Persistent Challenges, Uncertain Innovations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Pelletier, D., Kraak, V., McCullum, C. Uusitalo, U., & Rich, R. (1999). The shaping of collective values through deliberative democracy: An empirical study from New York’s north country. Policy Sciences, 32, 103–131.
Pellizzoni, L. (2003). Uncertainty and participatory democracy. Environmental Values, 12, 195–224.
Pratt, L., & Urquhart, I. (1994). The last great forest: Japanese multinationals and Alberta’s Northern forests. Edmonton, AB: NeWest Press.
Ribot, J. C. (2002). Democratic decentralization of natural resources: institutionalizing popular participation. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute.
Richardson, M., Sherman, J. & Gismondi, M. (1993). Winning back the words: confronting experts in an environmental public hearing. Toronto: Garamond Press.
Rousseau, A. H. (1996). Consensus-building and sustainable forest management in Canada. Stockholm, Sweden: intergovernmental workshop on sustainable forestry and land use: the process of consensus Building (14–18 October).
Sadler, B. (1977). ‘Basic issues in public participation: a background perspective’, in B. Sadler, ed., Involvement and Environment (Volume 1). Edmonton, AB: Environment Council of Alberta.
Schindler, D. W. (1998). A dim future for boreal waters and landscapes. Bioscience, 48, 157–165.
Schneider, R. R. (2001). Whatever happened to the Alberta forest conservation strategy? Encompass, 5, 9–13.
Schneider, R. R. (2002). A history of industrial development in Northern Alberta: 1900–2000. Edmonton, AB: Alberta Centre for Boreal Studies.
Senate Subcommittee on the Boreal Forest. (1999). Competing realities: the boreal forest at risk. Ottawa, ON: Subcommittee on the Boreal Forest of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
Stefanick, L., & Wells, K. (2000). Alberta’s special places 2000: conservation, conflict, and the castle-crown wilderness. in S. Bocking, ed., Biodiversity in Canada: Ecology, Ideas and Action. Perterborough, ON: Broadview Press.
Timoney, K., & Lee, P. (2001). Environmental management in resource-rich Alberta, Canada: first world jurisdiction, third world analogue? Journal of Environmental Management, 63, 387–405.
Torgerson, D. (1999). The promise of green politics: environmentalism and the public sphere. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Urquhart, I. (2001). New players, same game? Managing the boreal forest on Canada’s prairies. in M. Howlett, ed., Canadian forest policy: adapting to change. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
van Vliet, M. (1993). Environmental regulation in business: options and constraints for communicative governance. in J. Kooiman, ed., Modern Governance: new Government-Society Interactions. London: Sage.
Wondolleck, J. M., & Yaffee, S. L. (2000). Making collaboration work: lessons from innovation in natural resource management. Washington, DC: Island.
World Bank. (1996). The world bank participation sourcebook. Accessible at http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/sourcebook/sbhome.htm.
Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Parkins, J.R. De-centering environmental governance: A short history and analysis of democratic processes in the forest sector of Alberta, Canada. Policy Sci 39, 183–202 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-006-9015-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-006-9015-6