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Collaboration
and Compromise in the Great Bear Rainforest
By ZOE BLUNT
In February 2006, Greenpeace Sierra
Club and other groups celebrated a historic agreement with government
and industry to bring an end to the "war in the woods"
in the Great Bear Rainforest area of coastal British Columbia.
Less than a year later, observers say the agreement may be unraveling.
Timber companies have ratcheted up the rate of clearcut logging
to unprecedented levels, and guidelines for sustainable logging
are not being implemented.
Ian McAllister of Raincoast
Conservation Society says the sudden increase in logging on the
Central Coast is "unprecedented in fifteen years."
"It's unbelievable,"
McAllister says. "It's still just cut and run."
"It's talk and log,"
says Qwatsinas (Ed Moody), hereditary chief of the Nuxalk
Nation. "It is not a victory; everyone loses."
What's at stake is the largest
intact coastal rainforest in North America--home to thousand-year-old
red cedar forests, grizzlies, wolves, moose, mountain goats,
black bears, and rare white spirit (Kermode) bears. Protected
from logging and development by formidable mountains, this wild
and rugged coastline stretches hundreds of miles from the tip
of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan panhandle.
The ice-capped peaks rear up
from the ocean, cut by fjords and salmon streams and covered
with majestic cathedral forests. Whales and orcas swim through
the channels and inlets, delighting tourists. First Nations communities
fish, hunt, and gather berries, as they have done here for thousands
of years.
The Great Bear Rainforest,
we were told, is a wilderness legacy for our children and our
children's children.
How did this success story
turn sour?
Twelve years
of campaigning
It was members of the Nuxalk
Nation who first invited non-native environmentalists to their
traditional territory to witness large-scale clearcut logging
in 1994. The following year, Greenpeace teamed up with the Nuxalk
and other environmental groups to launch the campaign to save
the place they named "the Great Bear Rainforest."
By 1997, Nuxalk members and
their allies--Greenpeace, Forest Action Network, Bear Watch and
People's Action for Threatened Habitat--were blocking logging
operations on Roderick Island, King Island and Ista, which is
sacred to the Nuxalk as the place where the first woman came
to earth.
At dawn on June 6th, 1997,
workers for International Forest Products (Interfor) arrived
at Ista as usual to cut trees. Thirty protesters--including Nuxalk
chiefs in full regalia--greeted the workers with a blockade and
a huge tripod towering over the middle of the road. One protestor
was locked down to a cement anchor buried in the road, while
two more were perched at the apex of the tripod.
In total, fifty-five people
took over the road and shut down Interfor's logging operation
for nineteen days. Twenty-four people, including six members
of the Nuxalk Nation, were arrested when police arrived to enforce
a court injunction. Qwatsinas was one of those arrested and convicted
for blocking the road.
"I am charged with contempt
of court," Qwatsinas--a large, handsome man in his prime--told
Justice Vickers at his sentencing in 1999. "Yet there is
continuous contempt of our culture, our heritage, our lands and
our rights. Logging companies coming to our land without our
consent show contempt of our laws, our land, our people."
Indigenous people in Canada
are known as First Nations, and unlike their counterparts in
the U.S., most First Nations in British Columbia retain legal
rights on their traditional land for hunting, fishing, gathering
medicine, and decision-making about resources. Recent high court
decisions uphold these rights. But court challenges can take
years, and when faced with the imminent threat of "illegal"
logging or development on their traditional territory, many First
Nations in B.C. have resorted to acts of civil disobedience like
blocking logging roads.
In the 1990's, massive industrial
clearcutting was already taking place--without the permission
of First Nations--under the auspices of the province, which also
hosted a process called the Central Coast Land and Resource Management
Plan (CCLRMP). The process was widely condemned as a "talk
and log" exercise, until Sierra Club and Greenpeace set
their sights on the planning committee. The groups won a moratorium
in 1998 to suspend logging in intact rainforest valleys in the
Central Coast while they participated in the CCLRMP process.
Meanwhile, environmentalists
organized an international markets campaign to lobby buyers of
B.C. wood products around the world. As the boycott campaign
picked up steam, companies like Home Depot and Ikea dropped their
B.C. wood contracts, and the pressure was on to find a compromise.
"Customers don't want
to buy their two-by-fours or their pulp with a protester attached
to it. If we don't end it, they will buy their products elsewhere,"
Bill Dumont, chief forester at Western Forest Products, told
the Vancouver Sun in May 2000.
Also in 2000, Greenpeace, ForestEthics,
Rainforest Action Network, and Sierra Club of Canada--known collectively
as the Rainforest Solutions Project (RSP)--made a decision that
changed the course of the campaign. According to Qwatsinas and
others close to the Great Bear Rainforest, it was a serious strategic
error.
While negotiating the Great
Bear Rainforest Agreement, the RSP formally agreed to end their
protests, blockades and markets campaigns. For the duration of
the agreement, there would be no more high-profile blockades
of logging operations on the B.C. coast, no lobbying international
wood buyers, and no hardball criticism of the process to the
media.
But did the environmentalists
give up their only bargaining chip?
"They made the Central
Coast an environmental-protest-free zone," Qwatsinas says.
"We can't go out and blockade or protest. We're neutralized,
really. They [participating groups] are handcuffed. How are you
going to set forth your demands at the table when your will is
broken?"
The Big Greens kept their promise
to keep the peace with good faith and due diligence. It remains
to be seen whether the timber industry and the provincial government
will do the same.
As a hereditary chief with
a sworn duty to protect the land, Qwatsinas has been on the front
lines of this battle for more than fifteen years. Now, watching
clearcuts chewing up habitat for salmon and bears, he can't understand
the enviro groups' concessions. "They've given away too
much. It takes time to get the market campaign, the boycott campaign
going again. Think about those strengths that were given up--the
power that they had in making demands, but it's gone now. What
else can they use?"
Victory
through Compromise
RSP forged ahead with negotiations
about how much land to protect and how to log the rest. With
the Joint Solutions Project, the eco-groups collaborated with
industry, government, labor groups and First Nations to establish
interim agreements, logging moratoriums and other small victories.
Since the parties had pledged
to base the outcome on the best independent science available,
the province requisitioned a scientific review of the Central
and North Coast flora and fauna to make recommendations about
habitat protection. Seventeen scientists comprised the Coast
Information Team, and their findings in 2005 stated that setting
aside a minimum of 44 to 50 percent of the land area would be
necessary to save ecosystems and wildlife.
In 2006, the final agreement
was announced with fanfare by a provincial government eager to
paint itself green after years of cutting parks budgets and opening
wilderness areas to development and logging. But the Great Bear
Rainforest Agreement only commits to a "conservancy"
designation for 32 percent of the land, part of which is open
for mining, and all of which may be open to roads, hydroelectric
projects, tourism, and other uses.
Sierra Club campaigner Lisa
Matthaus admits the amount of protection was inadequate. "The
protected areas alone are not sufficient, but this is a political
compromise. You need to have a lot of parties in agreement."
"We wanted to meet the
recommendations of the scientists [on the Coast Information Team],"
she told The Martlet in 2005, "but we couldn't."
The quantity and quality of
the protected areas greatly concern conservationists in the region.
They cite the lack of connections and wildlife corridors between
small, widely scattered conservancies. Worse, wolves, a key predator,
were simply left out of the habitat surveys.
McAllister estimates that eighty
percent of salmon streams are outside the protected areas, along
with seventy percent of grizzly bear habitat. He notes that even
inside the conservancies, trophy hunting will be permitted
In May 2006, the B.C. Legislature
officially designated 25 conservancies in the Great Bear Rainforest.
As of December 2006, 85 more were still awaiting legal recognition.
Although they recognized that
the agreement didn't meet minimum standards, environmental groups
hoped more habitat might be saved through special forestry practices
known as ecosystem-based management (EBM).
Boom and
Bust
If one-third of the land base
of the Great Bear Rainforest is protected, according to the deal,
then two-thirds will be logged. How it will be logged is still
the subject of debate.
The logging industry, environmental
organizations, communities, labor unions, First Nations and the
B.C. government agreed to phase in new EBM logging practices
by 2009. The Rainforest Solutions Project website describes "lighter
touch practices" that would "protect old growth, wildlife
habitat, sensitive watersheds and salmon streams."
Instead of starting to adopt
these gentler practices, it appears some--if not most--timber
companies are stripping the land as fast as possible before the
2009 deadline.
Ian McAllister sums up the
current logging practices: "Clearcutting. Everywhere on
coast it's the status quo, clearcutting. It's no different than
what you'd see thirty years ago. In some places they may be doing
something different, but the vast majority is status quo logging."
Raincoast Conservation Society
has conducted research and education about the Great Bear Rainforest
since 1990. "I've just returned from a month of exploration
on the coast, looking at recent logging practices. Based on what
I've seen, I'm not hopeful. They've had years--decades really--to
get their act together and agree to basic principles of forestry.
They're still not adhering to those principles," McAllister
said.
"They've been told that
will change in 2009, so they're just trying to log as fast as
they can, and get roads into as many valleys as they can. There's
no interest in community employment or long term sustainable
logging jobs."
The clearcuts are bad enough,
but some timber companies are leveling the rainforest and then
hauling out only the best trees, mostly red cedar, leaving the
rest to be burned as slash or rot on the ground. High-grading
wastes millions of tons of wood each year, and it's universally
deplored as wasteful and contrary to sustainable forestry. The
combination of clearcuts and high-grading resembles the world's
worst slash-and-burn logging.
"It's a huge concern,"
McAllister says, "because this is the forest species with
the greatest economic value, and it's the rarest species in the
temperate rainforest. And it's being logged at an unsustainable
rate."
"In our October surveys
of recent logging operations on the Central and North Coast,
all of the cutblocks had hemlock and spruce stacked high ready
for burning," McAllister relates.
The final insult for coastal
communities--and loggers--is the destination of much of this
high-grade timber: foreign mills.
The Truck Loggers Association
(TLA) tackles the problem head-on in a position paper delivered
to the province November 22, 2006.
"Today, log shortages
are common across the coast," the paper states. "At
the same time, increasing volumes of exports continue to leave
the province, while many independent mill-investors are struggling
to secure wood in the marketplace to sustain their operations."
Qwatsinas compares the current
logging boom to the one in Nisga'a territory just before a treaty
agreement was signed. "They accelerated logging up to five
times the rate they were cutting before. Obviously, they've accelerated
the logging in the Central and North Coast too."
Even the RSP groups are getting
concerned. A press release in September 2006 charges the government
has missed deadlines it agreed to in February 2006, including
a pledge to legislate EBM measures and fund a scientific oversight
group. Also, they note, "some forest companies" still
have not begun the eco-logging practices they promised three
years ago.
Merran Smith of ForestEthics
says: "We stood on the stage and announced to the world
a new conservation approach for the Great Bear Rainforest, These
agreements are now at risk because a cornerstone of the agreement,
ecosystem-based management, is faltering. We are tired of big
talk with no action."
Pat Bell, a B.C. government
minister, responded to the RSP's complaints last month in an
interview with the Ottawa Citizen, saying the oversight
group would be established within weeks, and the initial objectives
for ecosystem-based management would soon be available to the
public. But Bell was vague about the time frame for "phasing
in" EBM.
"There could be components
of it in legislation next year," he said, "but the
commitment that I think is really important was full implementation
by 2009."
Those watching the clearcutting
on the North and Central Coast are not likely to be comforted
by assurances that things may change in a few years.
Division
in the ranks
Qwatsinas calls the Great Bear
agreement an "empty box." Essentially, the deal is
a framework, with timelines set for the parties to fill in the
details later. Ecosystem-based management itself is left undefined.
Even when a set of practices is eventually spelled out, the definition
will be subject to change.
The David Suzuki Foundation,
one of Canada's largest and most respected enviro groups, wouldn't
endorse the Great Bear agreement for this reason. "There's
no guarantees that acceptable EBM practices will be adopted,"
Bill Wareham said. "The agreement does not meet our expectation."
Several other groups dedicated
to the Great Bear Rainforest have walked away from the table,
including the Forest Action Network, Spirit Bear Youth Coalition,
Valhalla Wilderness Society, and Raincoast Conservation Society.
Valhalla Wilderness Society
has been collecting scientific data and working to protect the
coast for eighteen years. In a 2004 memo, society chair Anne
Sherrod blasted the RSP:
In the future, while logging
the unprotected ecosystems, timber corporations on the mid-coast
will enjoy the signed agreement of two of B.C.'s largest groups,
Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, as well as the U.S.-based ForestEthics
and Rainforest Action Network. The groups that will continue
working on additional protection on the coast--such as VWS, Raincoast,
Forest Action Network and David Suzuki Foundation--will be blocked
by the B.C. government and timber industry, using the agreement
signed by the RSP groups as a "done deal."
In the last few years, some
environmental groups and activists have lost patience with this.
After 15 years of seeing this happen, there should have been
more learning, more awakeness to the crisis of what we are losing
and how we are losing it. Instead we have the rhetoric and delusion
of "win--win" agreements.
First Nations people are also
divided in their response to the agreement. Even within the Nuxalk
Nation, the band council supports the process, while traditionalists
like Qwatsinas and the House of Smayusta oppose it vehemently.
The dissent is further fueled
by the fact that the agreement failed to respect a protocol with
the Nuxalk members who first invited Greenpeace to their territory
in 1994. The protocol between Greenpeace and the House of Smayusta
stated no deals would be made without the approval of the First
Nations partners.
"It was a bold move for
Greenpeace Canada to ignore the protocol and make the [Great
Bear] agreement without our approval," Qwatsinas notes.
"The sovereignty of Nuxalk lands and rights in our sense
took a back seat."
Elsewhere on the coast, the
Kitasoo Nation has signed the deal and now hopes to reap the
benefits--by logging Green Inlet, part of its traditional territory.
Although almost half of Kitasoo land is protected, and Kitasoo
Forest Products is cutting trees selectively instead of clearcutting,
the project has brought the wrath of Simon Jackson, founder of
the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition. Jackson says opening a key area
to logging could threaten the future of spirit bears.
"Everybody thought the
white bears were protected with that announcement," he said.
"A lot of great steps were taken . . . but it didn't protect
the spirit bear."
Simon says the Green watershed
is needed as a genetic buffer zone.
"What's happening now
is that if logging occurs in the Green, bears will be displaced
from their homes and the likely forced migration route they'll
take is over to Princess Royal Island, where they'll dilute the
gene pool and render the area thus far protected useless."
Grant Scott, a Kitasoo representative,
disputed Jackson's facts, pointing out the area being logged
is not prime black or spirit bear habitat.
"We talked to him about
this. We said, 'Simon, this isn't spirit bear country,' but he
apparently doesn't agree," Scott says.
B.C. lands minister Pat Bell
says that logging in spirit bear habitat is no problem, as long
as "the operation is in keeping with the February agreement,
which protected key spirit bear habitat, while leaving other
areas open to ecosystem-based logging."
The coalition says the agreement
has protected only two-thirds of the spirit bear's crucial habitat
and that the province is back-pedaling on its commitment to protect
the rest.
Now that logging has begun
in the last third, the small spirit bear population--estimated
at about 200 animals--faces an uncertain future, said executive
director Salimah Ebrahim.
Action and
collaboration
The announcement of the final
agreement set B.C.'s environmental community abuzz with debate
over tactics and strategies in the Great Bear Rainforest. Clearly,
Greenpeace has switched its focus from confrontation to cooperation,
no doubt to stay in line with the changing priorities of a protest-weary
public. Similarly, "finding solutions" and "building
consensus" have become the catch phrases of foundations
funding the large eco-groups in the U.S.
The evolution of Greenpeace
from a rag-tag band of protestors to a multinational bureaucracy
may explain its newfound commitment to collaboration with industry
and government. Ingmar Lee, a journalist and old-growth forest
activist from Vancouver Island, says the group has adopted the
corporate model it once deplored.
"This is exactly what
happens to forest protection activists who graduate from the
frontlines into paid positions and begin working themselves up
the ladder," Lee says. "Once they're into the $60,000-a-year
bracket, they just quite simply cannot relate to anyone in the
movement, but they can sure hobnob with the corporate logging
executives. They begin to see how the 'real world' works, and
they begin to understand that if they cooperate, they will start
to get some of that power."
By seeking closer relationships
to government and industry, Sherrod says, environmental organizations
can become alienated from their actual power bases: solidarity
with other environmental groups, widespread public support; and
the reality of what is happening in our environment as documented
by science. "I really don't think it's a problem particular
to big environmental groups or rich ones," she says. "I've
known lots of little ones to do this. And some large groups play
positive roles in the movement."
The Valhalla Wilderness Society
has campaigned tirelessly for the Great Bear Rainforest, but
it never participated in the negotiations. "We think decisions
on public lands should be made by open public process, and certainly
in conjunction with First Nations and in full accord with their
rights," Sherrod says. The Society did work with the planning
table, contributing its scientific surveys of potential protected
areas, for example, but eventually there was a split between
the environmental groups.
"I think the real problem
is that negotiations with industry bring about a fundamental
incompatibility in working methods," Sherrod continues.
"How can colleague environmental groups have solidarity
when some of them are having meetings with the logging companies
behind the backs of the others, making decisions that will affect
everyone, and keeping them secret until there's nothing that
can be done about it?"
Dani Rubin, secretary of B.C.
Pathways, says the exclusionary process inflicted "collateral
damage" on the entire B.C. environmental movement. "I
remember Don McMillan of Interfor telling me that the industry
had a plan for us [environmentalists]," he says. "It's
pretty clear now that the corporate strategy was to divide the
environmental movement by electing to negotiate only with the
'pragmatists,' leaving the rest of us out in the cold."
Rubin says in the rush to get
to the table and make a deal with industry and government, Greenpeace,
ForestEthics, and Sierra Club swept aside pre-existing agreements
with several environmental groups. Not only that, but an "umbrella
of silence" has stifled open discussion about the deal and
how it's being implemented.
Many observers report that
one of the conditions imposed on those who joined in negotiations
was a ban on any public complaints or criticisms aimed at the
process or any of the participants. Of course, the parties involved
are not disclosing details about any such restrictions.
Qwatsinas suggests more groups
should be speaking out about the agreement's shortcomings, but
"I don't think they can. Some of their hands are tied and
the gag order is in place."
Besides the forest, the wildlife,
fresh air and clean water, a substantial financial package is
at stake for the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement participants.
$120 million has been raised or pledged by foundations and the
government, and it's earmarked for First Nations sustainable
economic development and conservation projects. (Not to mention
the cost of the planning process itself.) And the Big Greens'
high-profile campaign, with the spirit bear as its mascot, has
served them well by raising their public relations profiles and
expanding their donor bases.
Lee says a cost-benefit analysis
of the money spent on the Great Bear Agreement comes up short.
"We've found organized, institutional environmentalism [in
B.C.] has failed over the last four years to accomplish anything,"
he complains. "The successes have come from individual grassroots
efforts that have basically bypassed the entrenched, bureaucratic,
environmental institutions that have been sucking up the enviro-buck
and just not getting the kind of accomplishments we need."
Lee is not surprised that the
RSP groups are getting "stabbed in the back" by government
and industry apparently reneging on the spirit of the agreement.
"I just believe that we
should be working together against these incorrigible forces
of destruction rather than working together with them,"
he says. "I have always advocated a broad spectrum of environmentalist
effort, but the grassroots activist community has been excluded
from the project from the start."
Lee understands the need for
no-compromise action; as a key member of the campaign to save
Cathedral Grove from a misguided parking lot, he spent over two
years helping to coordinate a campaign of road-blocking and tree-sitting
that ultimately forced the province to back off.
Qwatsinas also makes a distinction
between the efforts of grassroots groups versus the Big Greens.
"I'm glad there are some out there, groups like Raincoast,
trying to make an honest effort, protecting the environment,
who are not handcuffed by the process."
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