exacerbated, British Columbia salmon migration and spawning owing to the warming of waters; droughts throughout the Prairie provinces; sea level rise in the eastern provinces impacting coastal communities; and the eight percent reduction of sea ice coverage in the Arctic over the past thirty years, as well as thawing of permafrost and increased winter flow of rivers (DSF 2005) Already, climate change in British Columbia has caused the interior to warm by more than 1.1 to 1.7 C (MoE 2002) over the past century, which is two times the global average. In southern B.C., precipitation levels have risen 2 to 4% per decade over the last century, and are expected to rise another 10 to 20% over the next century (CFS 2005). The effects of climate change on Canadian and BC forests will be profound. Already a number of species impacts are becoming visible, including modification of migration patterns, length of growing seasons, species distributions, population sizes, and invasive species outbreak (CBD 2003). Over the next century, in part due to climate change, forest fire seasons are projected to grow rapidly and result in an increase of 38% of burn area in North American forests. Not only does this affect the environmental condition of the forest, but, revealing the difficulty in distinguishing some environmental values from economic and social ones, it has been estimated that these fires will cause the loss of $1.4 to $2.1 billion a year for the forest products industry over the next one hundred years (Malcolm 2005; NRC 2005). And although the exact contribution of C02 emissions is disputed, the most visible forest threat posed by climate change is its role in greatly exacerbating the spread of the mountain pine beetle. Roughly 8.5 million hectares of the BC interior was infected with the mountain pine beetle in 2005 (MoF 2005) in future, the beetle is projected to kill 80% of merchantable and susceptible lodgepole pine across BC (McGarrity and Hoberg 2005). Economic and Social The enormous challenges facing British Columbias forest environment exist along side similarly troubling economic and social concerns. The BC forest economy faces a number of challenges related to market globalization especially owing to rapidly expanding and changing economics in lesser developed countries, including China and Russia, and the ongoing uncertainty of the US-Canada softwood lumber dispute. Indeed, a CIBC World Markets analysis (CIBC World Markets 2005) has argued that, in general, BC forestry will face increasing consolidation, decreasing forest commodity prices, and increasing wood supply (from competitors) (CIBC World Markets 2005: 1). Moreover, it argues that the emergence of China as an economic power, owing both to the increasing size of its economy in general, and its impact on forest products sector specifically, is arguably the biggest economic shock to the global forest products industry. Whether this shock is positive or negative depends, in part, on the product in question, and the need to consider both increasing supply and increasing customer (Nilssona and Bull 2005). When such calculations are made, the CIBC report reasons that China will be neither a competitor nor customer on paper; that it will be a customer for pulp; but a competitor for solidwood products in large part because the extremely low labour costs in China visa-a-vis its western competitors. Low labour costs allow China, Howe et al have found (All over the Map: A Comparison of Provincial Climate Change Plans 2005), to produce finished forest products at much lower costs than the US and Canada1. Indeed, the global South in general has much lower input costs. The CIBC World Markets report notes that Prices in Chile, Brazil and Australia are one-half to one-third of that prevailing in many of the main producing regions in the Northern Hemisphere. (CIBC World Markets 2005:12) The role of timber supply from other countries is also important to the BC forest economy. For instance, the CIBC report notes that Russia currently has a 50% gap between its current harvesting levels, and what it could produce with improved infrastructure (ibid 14). Realization of this on the part of global capital markets has led, Howe et al reveal (All over the Map: A Comparison of Provincial Climate Change Plans 2005) to a massive influx of new capital to the wood products industry of that country.

Characterizing the internal decision-making approaches of policy actors Longstanding debates about the types of evaluation efforts governmental officials undertake, or ought to, when offering policy advice to their political masters has yielded rich analytic distinctions centering around three dimensions: how rational choices over a particular policy are, or ought to be including the time frame in which the evaluation of the policy impacts are considered (i.e. how far into the future?); and the size of the policy choices away from the status quo. Herbert Simon (Simon 1957) is arguably the best known champion of a rational approach characterized by application of the scientific method to guiding policy making choices. A key assumption of this approach is that policy makers, or their advisors, ought to identify the various goals that will influence a policy choice (such as environmental protection or economic development), operationalize them into measurable objectives (such as maintaining species populations or employment levels), and then predict the impacts of various policy choices up for consideration (Weimer and Vining 1999).2 For Simon, policy alternatives should be as sweeping as possible in order to address a policy problem, and the impacts should also be assessed as far into the future as possible, so that the best informed, systematic, and hence most rational choice can be made. However, Lindblom (Lindblom 1959) criticized these efforts, arguing that policy makers tend to undertake small incremental changes because choices are made within the limited time spans of short term electoral cycles, and because they lack complete information about the range of impacts (especially in the long run) of different policy options. Instead, Lindblom championed what he called the science of muddling through which called for only small steps from the status quo. Since big choices could lead to big mistakes, Lindblom argued that an incremental approach better fit with the realities bureaucrats actually face. Although starting from different places, the net result of Lindblom and Simons exchanges highlights the utility of being as rational and well-informed as possible within the confines of an uncertain and constantly changing world. What has emerged from these insights is agreement within the literature that policy choices follow a continuum, from blundering or seat of the pants/bumbling approaches, that have little systematic analysis to them, being located on one end of an evaluation classification pendulum, to perfectly rational choices with complete information about short and long term impacts of a range of policy options, on the other end of the continuum (Howlett and Ramesh 2003).3 While it is doubtful the latter could ever be attained, these classifications offered by this literature permit us to assess where various choices made by forestry actors in British Columbia might be located along this continuum. For the purposes of this paper we draw on this literature to identify a continuum of policy evaluations that governmental, forest company, environmental group and professor forester officials might undertake in responding to, or championing, particular policy goals (Figure One). On the left hand side we identify seat of the pants or bumbling through decision making processes that have little systematic thought or analysis given to them. Such decisions would be made with limited effort to understand the range of choices that might be available to them, and only limited attention would be placed in analyzing the range of future direct and indirect impacts that a particular choice might have. We also not that when policy makers choices fall under such classifications, that they will be difficult to predict, since it will be impossible to know, on what basis, these choices might be made. Moving along the continuum, we note that strategic short term decision making processes capture those policy evaluations that are taken after consideration of various policy options and that are designed to ameliorate a particular problem. While strategic short term choices may involve a considerable level of thoughtful planning, they are based on relatively short term time horizons such as the next electoral cycle while longer term, potentially perverse impacts, are rarely reflected on or tended to. Given that such choices are made with available knowledge and immediate or near term impacts, choices made by such types of evaluations are much easier to predict, since we know that they apply a rational scientific approach but consider limited variables and time horizons. At the right end of the continuum we identify strategic long term evaluations of the sort championed by Simon that are undertaken based on a broad consideration of short

Convert

2. Response to pressure:
Resist (win/lose) Acquiesce (lose/win) Compromise ( and ) Innovate (win/win)* *Innovate win/win refers specifically to innovation involving creative problem-solving that addresses the environmental problem and the interests of the actors to the satisfaction of all concerned.
3. Efforts to change initial responses: Manipulating/converting = action meant to change actors and their initial

evaluations.

Changing interests

Changing values

4. Changes in interests, norms and values may or may not occur as a result of the above interactions.
**In the paper, we primarily classify actors according to their internal processes and responses to pressure (1. and 2. above) but bring in 3. and 4. where appropriate and in the conclusion.**
Application of Framework Issue Areas: A Qualitative Historical and Comparative Approach Domestic policy Environmental forest practice rules Introduction: Issue, Actors and Interests There are a range of actors and issues (Bernstein and Cashore 2001) involved in forest practices regulations: industry, government (including elected politicians and administrative officials, the latter divided between agency officials focusing on economic development and those focusing on environmental protection), environmental groups, and professional foresters (that tend to reflect latest ideas about scientific management of forests). First Nations are heavily involved over issues including customary rights to the forest resources, as well as sources of indigenous knowledge and culture. Forest
dependent communities are also critical players, as the boom and bust cycle of the forest sector means that they are more deeply affected by changes in forest products markets, and by environmental forest regulations Application of framework: overview Until the advent of forest certification in the mid-1990s, most of the conflicts over forest resource management in the United States, Canada, and Europe and globally centered on the development of governmental regulations. Environmental groups sought to impose tougher policies governing harvesting operations (how to log) as well as to increase the amount of forest area in which commercial practices were prohibited (forest preservation). Such efforts confronted forest policy networks that until the 1960s were largely closed clientelist processes dominated by governmental agencies whose mission was to enhance the economic value of the forest resource (Cashore 1997), and representatives from forest companies and forestry associations seeking to ensure collegial relations among their governmental counterparts (Glueck Rayner and Cashore). Under such conditions environmental groups initially met resistance from industry and governmental agencies in their efforts to increase regulatory requirements over the environmental impacts of harvesting. Forest companies and their associations across North America were generally uniform in their response and beliefs, i.e. that they historically practiced rational and scientifically sound forest management (Aplet et al. 1993) and as a result, did not need additional and burdensome regulatory oversights. Environmental groups undertook a series of converting efforts, but with the exception of conservation efforts aimed at either ensuring that forests lands remained forested (efforts the industry supported as it added to their fibre supply), or efforts to create national parks that would forbid most forms of commercial activity, they met with limited success. However, the uniform resistance of policy subsystems to respond to such pressures began to diverge within North America, as the first wave of environmentalism beginning in the late 1960s (Paehlke 1992) resulted in a number of legislative initiatives within the US Congress. Among the most notable pieces of new legislation was the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA) requirement that mandated the public land management agencies protect threatened and endangered species on publicly owned forestland. Another key piece of legislation was the 1976 National Forest Management Act (NFMA), which, although initiated to give discretion to the National Forest Service (Hoberg 1992, 2003), required that the Forest Service produce land and resource management plans (LRMPs) that would "provide for diversity of plant and animal communities and had accompanying, administrative regulations requiring that LRMPs maintain "viable populations of existing native and desired non-native vertebrate species", "where appropriate" and "to the degree practicable." Buttressing these pieces of legislation was the National Environmental Policy Acts requirement that key governmental projects undergo environmental assessments. While these new statutory decisions did not, at first, alter clientelist policy networks at the management level, they sowed the seeds for increased environmental activism and use of the court process (Hoberg 1993), which would provide a remarkably powerful tool in converting policy makers towards the environmental group agenda. Largely as a result of federal action, and the fears that this raised on the part of industry that the federal government might move to step up their regulations on private forest land, industry in Oregon and Washington undertook highly strategic efforts to promote forest practices legislation at the state level. The primary justification for this strategy was to preempt potential federal intrusion into private forestland regulation and to avoid the hysteria that they believed underpinned the development of the federal legislative changes.5

multi-stakeholder conception of policy making, the original signatories Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Coastal Rainforest Coalition, Weyerhaeuser, Western Forest Products and Fletcher challenge, immediately apologized and reached out to First Nations, explaining that [i]t was not our intent to disrespect the interests of First Nations and that it was their intent to create a more stable opportunity for all parties involved in forest issues on the central and north coast of B.C. to work together to develop new approaches to resolving controversy over conservation and management of old growth forests. (Bernton 2003) And though the road to a final agreement was not always smooth (Bradford et al. 2003), it was clear that over time the parties agreed that they needed to act collectively to preserve goals they all deemed legitimate. An interim agreement in 2001 institutionalized interest in learning across different specific stakeholder interests, and the needs to find a collective solution including undertaking joint scientific research projects, doubling protected areas in the region to 21% and creating a multi-million dollar transition fund for communities that would be hurt by reduced logging (Morishita and Hoberg 2001) Though a detailed history of the Central Coast agreement is beyond the scope of this paper, a broad strategic analysis reveals a landmark case of win win innovation based on an evolving expansion of initially conflicting, short term interests. Economic actors became personally committed to the environmental goals of the coalition, environmental groups became vested in First Nations issues and appreciated the challenges that forestry firms face. Furthermore, while government was a critical and crucial participant, it came in only after environmental and industry groups had undertaken their own interactions and decision making processes (Morishita and Hoberg 2001). In the end, the 2006 announcement can be described as nothing short of impressive. It adds 1.2 million hectares of protected areas to the existing 600, 000 in the region (increasing BCs total protected areas in the province to just under 14%, it creates specific standards for old growth, riparian areas, biodiversity, grizzly and black bear habitat, and salmon habitat, it requires the Use of traditional, local, and scientific knowledge of natural ecological patterns and processes as well as the use of risk assessment to develop ecosystemspecific management. In addition, it institutionalizes new collaborative approaches to implementation and engagement (British Columbia. Ministry of Agriculture and Lands and Premier 2006). It is arguably for these reasons that Forest Ethics official Merran Smith referred to it as being like a revolution," offering a new way of thinking about how you do forestry; why Premier Campbell explained that This collaboration is something we have to take into the future, and it is something the world can learn from." Why Heiltsuk Tribal council Chairman Ross Wilson explained that we can manage our destiny," and why Patrick Armstrong heralded the 2006 final agreement as a big big deal that needs to celebrated noting that "Everyone had a greater interest in resolving the problems than continuing the conflict" (Krauss 2006). The above sections took care to apply our classification framework to assess the strategic approaches to forest policy development in BC over time. Such an approach mirrors the vast majority of analyses of BC forestry that tend to examine BC developments in isolation from other Canadian provinces or its competitors in the United States and globally. Such an approach is problematic as it can lead members of the BC forest policy community to neglect putting in context what BC is doing in comparison with the rest of the world. For example, if the BC governments regulatory changes are asserted to remove environmental regulations, and if BC Ministry of Forests staff reductions are asserted to reduce its effectiveness reduces its enforcement capacity, and if these assertions are used as a reason for giving preference to timber produced outside of BC, then we would actually need to know how environmental regulations and enforcement compare to other jurisdictions. That is, we have no way of knowing the impacts of shifting timber producing choices away from BC unless we also know what is going on elsewhere.

We have adopted the FAO definition of plantations for the purpose of systematic comparisons across countries. The FAO defines plantations as forest stands established by planting and/or seeding in the process of afforestation or reforestation. They are either of introduced species (all planted stands), or intensively managed stands of indigenous species, which meet all the following criteria: one or two species at planting, even age class, regular spacing FAO. 2001. Forest Plantation Resources, FAO Data Sets, 1980, 1990, and 2000. Rome: Forest Resources Division, FAO.
reasons, give varying degrees of trust that forest managers will encourage environmentally sound practices if left to their own devices. On the other side of the debate, many forest managers find prescriptive policies costly and insufficiently flexible to address the tremendous diversity of contexts in which forestry is practiced. For the purposes of our analysis, therefore, the level of policy prescriptiveness provides important clues to the political dynamics of each jurisdiction in question. Even more importantly, it sets the stage for future analyses that can assess what policy approach may be more effective under which conditions. The level of policy discretion, however, tells us nothing about the extent of protection afforded. For example, one can establish a non-discretionary policy that provides only marginal environmental protection, or enact procedural policies that cripple entire forest operations. In order to address this issue, therefore, a second comparative method used was the quantitative comparison of environmental performance thresholds. Finally, the tri-partite comparative method includes a qualitative discussion regarding the limitations of these methods in capturing important contextual differences. This qualitative discussion is particularly critical given the vast environmental, social and economic diversity of settings in which these forest policies are enacted. In order to apply our framework systematically and consistently across jurisdictions, it was first necessary to carefully select and define the forest practice issues we would assess. For this purpose, we selected five policy criteria, along with associated indicators that covered a breadth of issues related to environmental forest protection. The five criteria are: riparian protection, clearcutting and related cutting rules, reforestation, road building and the calculation of annual allowable cut. While far from comprehensive, these criteria do address issues of commonly accepted importance. However, as will be explained further in this paper, the primary utility of this type of assessment is to promote policy learning through standardized comparison. The intention is not to promote one countrys efforts over anothers. The list of policy criteria covered is not exhaustive, nor does our framework address the issue of effectiveness, either in terms of consistency in applying the policy on the ground, or in terms of environmental protection. The selection of case study jurisdictions is also of critical importance. The case studies listed here are countries that lead their respective regions in forest cover and/or value of their import/export wood products trade. For those countries where most forest policies are determined at a sub-national level, subnational jurisdictions were selected for the size of their forest area and/or volume of wood product production. Likewise, the landownership type under comparison is that which dominates the forest area and/or forest production within the given jurisdiction. The case studies included in this paper are: Canada (British Columbian provincial lands), the US (Georgia and Washington private and US Forest Service lands), Germany (Bavaria private lands), Finland (private lands), Australia (New South Wales private lands), Indonesia (federal lands), and South Africa (private plantations).*** Empirical Results/Findings When applied to our case study jurisdictions, this classification of forest policy approaches revealed striking differences both among jurisdictions as well as among policy criteria within the same jurisdiction. In general BC policies ranked as among the most consistently prescriptive of the thirty-eight case study

Overall, it is widely agreed that the issues of global trade and security have dominated the global governance arena. This dominance is reflected in international law, with the strongest language devoted to the promotion of free trade and the protection of national sovereignty (Sands 2003; Bernstein 2002) and has led to rather ineffective environmental policy regimes (Speth 2004; Young 1999) and has led others to bring environmental concerns into trade agendas (Esty 1994). A primary tension in global politics, furthermore, has been centered along a North/South split regarding the sovereign right of Southern countries to economic development enjoyed by the North (Porter, Janet Brown, and Chasek 2000), and the exchange of resources to compensate for any externally opposed obstacles to that development. These issues, as we will see, re-emerge continuously in environmental negotiations forming seemingly intractable barriers to widespread consensus. Initial attempts at global environmental agreements emerged in the 1970s, around the time of the first UN Conference on Environment and Development. These early agreements include, for example, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the World Heritage Convention (WHC), and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). All of these conventions were relatively narrow in focus, emphasizing the listing and protection of globally significant sites and species. Furthermore, they were given limited priority and little license to infringe on the development of global production and consumption. At the same time, economic burdens resulting from these treaties were felt more keenly in the Southern Hemisphere. The lack of measures to address North/South inequalities fueled long-term Southern resentments (Sands 2003: 8). V. Intergovernmental forest negotiations Intergovernmental forest negotiations over forestry have followed a complex and diffuse path. In 1985 the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) (Gale 1998) was launched with a mandate to promote global trade in tropical timber products and while primarily focused on trade, also incorporated the conservation of tropical forests into its organizational mandate. Whether a forest agreement centered around trade is suited to address environmental threats to tropical forests has been debated by environmental groups, who argue that such an approach acquiesces to timber interests while resisting calls from environmental groups for a more prescriptive approach (Dauvergne 1997, 2001). Critiques argue that even if accompanied by tough rules, the fact that approximately 6% of tropical non-coniferous roundwood is sold for export limits any impact that trade-based rules might have. Environmental groups and forest policy scholars have, in turn, noted that key underlying drivers of tropical forest degradation and deforestation are not owing solely to timber trade but also to a diversity of cross-sectoral issues such as the expansion of permanent agriculture and cattle ranching [Geist, 2002 #4848]. Thus, this early exclusive focus on tropical forests and international trade led environmental groups and their allies to call for greatly increased global commitment to resolving global forestry challenges and for working hard to establish a Global Forest Convention, which they hoped would be agreed to at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The Rio Summit in 1992 captured the worlds attention, and fueled the rising popularity of sustainable management and embracing liberal environmentalism (Bernstein 2002) as the key to a win win marriage between environment and development interests. In the language of sustainability, environmental protection is considered intimately connected with long-term economic prosperity and the well-being of the planet as a whole. This perspective in which strategic actors attempted to find, or at least attempted to uncover, innovative win win solutions, led to a number of global statements produced in Rio, including Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and the Statement of Principles for the Sustainable Management of Forests. However, the failure of the worlds nations to agree to a binding global forest convention, of which Canada was a champion, led environmental groups to feel that governments had acquiesced to an industry agenda, largely fending off their calls for increased and meaningful environmental commitments.

Table Case study countries involved in FLEG processes, November 2005
Country East Asia and Pacific FLEG Africa FLEG European Union FLEGT Action Plan Europe and North Asia FLEG
South Africa Indonesia Brazil Russia Australia Finland Germany USA Canada X X X

X X X X X X X X X

Source: D. Humphreys. Forthcoming. Logjam: Deforestation and the Crisis of Global Governance. London: Earthscan. Arguably, the most innovative and potentially far-reaching approaches to the governance of both supply side capacity building and demand side discrimination have occurred outside of government forums. Forest certification was a pioneer in these non-state strategies. The following sections will cover the strategic dynamics of forest certification in more detail. However, it is important to at least briefly discuss the role of certification expressly in the context of illegal logging. It is generally agreed that forest certification has yet to make headway in the monumental areas of tropical forest degradation, deforestation, and forest crime. However, as soon as this became evident to the NGO community, various NGOs began to innovate ways to utilize key elements of forest certification to enhance other complementary efforts. Diverse organizations such as the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), The Nature Conservancy, and Tropical Forest Trust were instrumental in developing the concept of step-wise certification. The rationale behind step-wise certification is that many tropical forest operators are in need of considerable support and capacity building before they can be expected to meet the certification standards in full. Step-wise certification, therefore, begins with the determination of a forestry operations legality. That first step is of great potential use in government and industry procurement policies. For many ENGOs, however, this first step must necessarily be followed with a long-term commitment to continue the upward climb of performance standards until full FSC-accredited certification is reached. Also of direct relevance to the illegal logging issue, many forest certification systems have developed their own wood procurement requirement. The FSC was the first system to develop on-product labels and also the first to enforce minimum standards for the non-certified wood included in certified products. However, other systems have followed suit. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative, a US industry-backed initiative, now requires its processing and manufacturing members to purchase wood only from sustainable sources. The SFI standards are quite broadly worded, however, in regard to the purchase of wood products from outside the US and Canada (SFI 2005). Nevertheless, they do constitute a strategy for preventing SFI members from purchasing illegally produced wood products.

buyers, avert boycott threats, and ensure international customers that Canada is working towards sustainability in its forests (Forest Alliance 1996). The CPPA committed three years of funding for CSA certification standards (Elliott 1999). The Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, the Canadian Forest Service, and Industry Canada, also gave support to the CSA certification process as a strategy aimed at secure market access (Elliott 1999) by acquiescing to the idea of forest certification, but resisting the FSC version. As a result most BC forest companies gave their early and quick support to the CSA, which they viewed as much less intrusive and more appropriate than the FSC program. And for the same reasons, most major environmental groups, along with other social organizations28, ended up boycotting the CSA process (Gale and Burda 1997), arguing that the CSA was an effort to reduce the stricter environmental regulations offered by the FSC (Mirbach 1997), with BC activists arguing that the CSA, by resisting FSC efforts, would permit continued clearcutting in the province (Curtis 1995). Even before CSA standards were complete, groups such as Greenpeace stated in 1995 that CSA standards would allow products derived by large-scale clearcutting and chemical pesticides use to be called ecologically responsible, noting also that all major environmental groups have come forward to condemn it (cited in Greenpeace Canada, Greenpeace International, and Greenpeace San Francisco 1997,25). By 1996 the CSA program standards were completed. While more flexible and discretionary than FSC on environmental performance requirements, the CSA was viewed by many as rigorous on rules for community consultation and a multi-stakeholder standards development process, with some industry officials believing that in this area the CSA rules were potentially more onerous than the FSCs requirements.29 Many BC companies latched onto the CSA initiative and explicitly criticized the FSC. Many felt that the FSC was something that had to be fended off.30 For instance, as the then chair of the Forest Alliance of BC, Jack Munro stated: Even the FSC's broad principles have been generated by people with no experience in developing international standards, have been developed without any input from those involved in sustainable forest management and have had no input from government. Companies in Canada are lining up to be certified with an independent and more objective model developed by the Canadian Standards Association. And those standards will be very high indeed. What's required, and what Greenpeace Canada cannot provide, is credibility and independence (Forest Alliance of British Columbia 1997). The effects of FSC and CSA Efforts to Gain Support The introduction of the FSC and CSA into BC forestry debates quickly spiraled into a high stakes competition over which program would be seen as having the legitimate authority to create certification rules. The forest industry was, for the most part, content to support and portray the CSA as the credible national certification program, while it viewed the prescriptive, wide-ranging rules of the FSC as threatening. This programs supporters recognized that if other programs gained support in the marketplace, the very vision of the FSC would be compromised, and their reasons for creating the FSC in the first place were all but lost. Table 3.2, Strategic efforts to either gain or maintain support between 1994 and 2002 FSC competitor program supporters FSC supporters Year Action Strategy Action Strategy

CSFCC approaches CSA about creating a national SFM certification program

Pacifying

CSA releases specification and guidance documents for its Canadian SFM certification program Industry launches domestic public relations campaign to fight international market pressure CPPA and government establish international public relations campaign to counter misinformation given to foreign customers by environmental groups Western Forest Products begins working with SGS to develop interim standards for FSC certification in BC
Environmental groups back out of CSA standards development, condemning the program Founding of FSC National initiative and creation of a fourth Aboriginal chamber Pacifying Marketing campaigns in Europe begin to make direct demands for FSC certification WWF 95 group renamed the 95 plus group; group membership continued to expand and demands for FSC began clearer WWF buyer groups established in other European countries and in the US European customers begin to cancel contracts with BC forest companies or threaten to do so in the future Creation of the CFPC in the US

Converting

Informing

Fending off

Acquiescing /Compromisi ng
Western Forest Products and MacMillan Bloedel announce intentions to pursue FSC certification (June)

Acquiesce/C ompromise

RAN and Coastal Rainforest Coalition (now ForestEthics) begins campaign against Home Depot
Forest Alliance of British Columbia and Industrial Wood and Allied Workers Union seek membership with the FSC
Home Depot releases wood procurement policy that states preference for FSC certified wood (august) Wickes (no. 2 DIY in the US) announces procurement policy preferring FSC FSC changes principle nine, emphasizes maintaining and enhancing High Conservation Value Forests Further US companies (e.g. Centex Corp., Kaufman & Board Home Corp., Lowes, and Anderson Windows) announce procurement policies preferring the FSC

Conforming

CSA participates in the Acquiesce/C PEFC, while not yet ompromise seeking endorsement for its program from the PEFC Council CSA releases Forest Conforming Products Marking Program Conforming 2002 CSA releases draft revised standards with increased emphasis on consultation procedures and enhancements to its standards (feb) Source: Cashore, Auld and Newsom (2004: Chapter Three) FSC and CSA supporters undertook an array of strategic actions as a result (Table 3.2). Amidst this seeming chaos, significant patterns of successful efforts resulted, with the three factors described above facilitating, for the most part, FSC converting strategies. The CSA was on a more defensive and conforming mode not only in its efforts to gain acceptance further down the supply chain (among wholesalers and retailers), but also in its efforts to remain the sole choice of certification program among BC companies. 31 The FSC supporters began their efforts with aggressive market-based converting strategies aimed at generating FSC demand further down the supply chain -- demand that was most easily created outside the Canadian political arena. Drawing on successful boycott campaigns, groups were now returning to the same companies to offer them a carrot (public recognition that they were supporting sustainable forest

changes in our operations (Hogben 1998). This statement stood in contrast to the previous position of the Forest Alliance of BC and illustrates the change in approach that was occurring among key forest companies in their bid to achieve FSC certification. Standards-setting process and forest company support These initial firm-level decisions sparked a series of strategic decisions within the BC forest industry to participate in FSC processes in order to change the program from within, rather than fighting it from the outside. At the provincial level forest companies now joined the FSC standards-setting process, rather than boycotting it, making a decision that stands in stark contrast to most US forest company decisions to not participate in FSC regional standards-setting processes. Individuals, companies, and associations began to apply for membership (Hamilton 1999; Jordan 1999), taking elected positions on the FSC-BC steering committee and nominating and having their members posted to the BC Standards Team (Forest Stewardship Council. British Columbia Regional Initiative 1999). And in a striking move, the Forest Alliance of BC, soon to be joined by BCs Industrial Wood and Allied Workers Union, decided to apply for FSC membership, attend its meetings, and influence policy debates. Importantly, this increased support was occurring as the Home Depot announced its pro-FSC purchasing policy in August of 1999 (Carlton 2000). While movement had already started in the BC case, this announcement certainly served to shore up support, with industry officials now recognizing that BCs largest market, not just Europes, was becoming an increasingly important factor. And while the US chapter reveals that US forest companies reacted to the Home Depot announcement by altering the SFI, BC companies took this announcement as another indication that their steps toward the FSC were going to prove productive. The result of these moves was that the CSA was being marginalized as a player in certification debates in BC, since companies were focusing on changing the FSC, rather than on attempting to make the CSA more palatable. (This stood in stark contrast to certification debates south of the border, where industry was frantically readjusting its program to conform to retailer certification requirements, while focusing on ensuring member companies remained unsupportive of the FSC). The BC industry strategy was effective in responding to the fact that companies felt the original draft standards poorly addressed their concerns. As one industry official noted, In BC. [the first FSC standards development process] turned out to be a complete mess, so they wiped the slate clean and theyre starting over again. The industry is making damned sure that theyre [at the standards development process] this time, so they get something out of it, if they have to do it. 43 The response of many provincial governmental officials toward the FSC mirrored industry changes. Governmental officials in the Ministry of Forests and trade agencies were at first highly skeptical, laying out conditions under which certification must work in the province (British Columbia. Ministry of Forests 2000). Although industry was clearly the target, support from the government was key, since, as both the regulators and owners of 95 percent of the forest land base, their support would be important for removing any obstacles that might exist. Despite significant opening up of the BC forest policy making process in the 1990s, the BC Ministry of Forests historically has had the closest ties of any agency to the forest industry (Wilson 1998), and, as a result, industry changes in FSC certification may have facilitated the Forest Ministrys changes as well. The FSC and its supporters noted the changes, with one FSC supporter explaining that the BC government has now embraced the FSC as one of the certification schemes, and even goes so far as to insinuate that they were integral in having it come to BC.44 The Ministry of Forests has recently chosen to officially take a cooperative role toward certification (BC Ministry of Forests 2001). The new Liberal government has indicated it will work to address conflicts between provincial legislation and the FSC standard (Haddock 2000). An example is the efforts by Timfor Contractors Ltds to obtain FSC certification for its temporary five year non-replaceable Forest Licence in Knight and Call Inlets, located on the mainland coast opposite the northern tip of Vancouver

itself is not a unified body and that strategic decisions are not often made at the same level within the organization, nor with the same goals in mind. The FSC leadership in Oaxaca, and officials from leading FSC-accredited certification bodies, were clearly concerned that the stringent BC standards would not only hamper what, they felt, was one of the FSCs best success stories, and that what happened in BC might send signals to companies far beyond the provinces borders. But many environmental group participants on the BC standards committee had long focused on BC forestry and had, through years of frustration, come to see the FSC standards setting process as a way of gaining the increased standards that they were unable to achieve at the public policy level. They strongly believed that if increased rules were not put in place, the old growth dependent forest ecosystems would be destroyed and lost forever.54 During the fall of 2002 and winter of 2003, the FSC Secretariat wrestled with how it would respond to industrys protest, finding no easy way out of this difficult situation. If they move to strike the standards, they risk losing their most solid supporters in British Columbia, and perhaps its legitimacy among environmentalists there. If they had accepted the standards, they risked losing support from industry in one of the places in the North that has been most hospitable to FSC-style certification -- and risked sending signals to other potential industry supporters to be very careful before offering support to the FSC. This conundrum came at a time when the CSA was given new life. The CPPA recreated itself as the Forest Products Association of Canada in 2001, hired a new director, moved to the nationals capital, and immediately began to set a path of approachment with the World Wildlife Fund and the Global Forest and Trade Network. While efforts to have the CSA formally interact with the FSC have proven difficult, the future path in BC, and in Canada as a whole, does now seem to rest on the ability of strategic actors, both within the FSC and the CSA, to recognize what kind of strategies are most likely to be effective given the environment within which they operate, and the broader constraints imposed by market-based governance. FSC international officials recognized these constraints. They supported changes made at their General Assembly that would require broader support from national initiatives before standards were sent to Oaxaca for approval. And in January of 2003 they proposed a compromise solution for the BC case in which standards would be approved, but subject to revisiting a number of the most controversial rules, and to involving forest companies directly in such revisions. Indeed, their report went out of its way to note that a number of the BC standards went significantly beyond the requirements of the FSC P&C (Principles and Criteria) (Forest Stewardship Council 2003: 5). And in a direct rebuke to the BC regional standards setting process for moving ahead without industry support, the report asserted that such high standards would require a higher than normal degree of agreement (Forest Stewardship Council 2003: 5). The following two years witnessed sensitive negotiations about final standards to which environmental groups could support, and also allowed at least some industrial companies to evaluate that supporting the FSC was in their strategic interests. Assessing the Framework What sort of internal decision-making compass and resulting strategy does this indicate? The original BC NGO vision of forest certification as an instrument to transform the scale, intensity and philosophical approach to forest management was certainly long-term and arguably quite communitybased. The strategy, due in part to its novelty perhaps, was somewhat seat of the pants. Innovations, after

WA (east)

Figure Streamside riparian buffer zone widths in select certification standards Clearly, there are substantial differences in standards among certification systems, an in the case of the FSC, as well as among regions. These standards, furthermore, must also be considered within the context of underlying government regulations to evaluate the overall differences in performance requirements.
Of course, the ultimate question facing all forest policies, whether based in government law or voluntary certification systems, is the effectiveness of these policies in achieving their intended outcomes. Answering this question requires detailed, ground proofed study and remains an area in strong need of research. We suggest, however, that increasing the global transparency of forest policies through comparative studies, as well as constructive dialogue, constitutes an important first step to learning how policies can best address the shared goal of sustainable global forest management. VI. Conclusion Globalization has created unprecedented risks and opportunities for the British Columbian forest sector. The rapid expansion of developing and economies in transition countries including China, Russia has heightened global competition for wood products while the US and Canada softwood lumber trade dispute has exacerbated economic uncertainties. Whether the overall effect of increased economic globalization will work to ameliorate, or contribute to environmental deterioration of the planet, is hotly disputed (Clapp and Dauvergne). On the one hand many governments and international agencies continue to view the expansion of global trade as the linchpin of economic, social and environmental prosperity. From this perspective, economic growth is the best approach for poverty amelioration, which in turns creates the necessary preconditions for environmental protection. However, critics of this pathway note that the growth of industrial production and consumption has itself been a driver the environmental deterioration. These critics emphasize the correlation between economic growth, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change. These critics prefer a different pathway that would recognize the complex relationship between human activity and the natural environment in which feedback loops, such as the pine beetle outbreak associated with increasing climate change, create economic uncertainty that the most sophisticated economic models would have difficulty predicting. They argue that the Pine Beetle outbreak is only one of what will be increasing and accelerating impacts of climate change that a pathway focused on economic growth cannot adequately address (Clapp and Dauvergne). Which approach has more validity in shaping organizational strategic policy choices? While most professional foresters, and governmental, industry, and environmental groups would agree that it is in their interests to act strategically, just what this means in an increasingly unpredictable world, and how best accomplish this, is not always clear. Previous analytical efforts have attempted to reduce this uncertainty by compartmentalizing strategic responses into their component parts hence the forest industry has commissioned economic analyses on the future of the BC and Canadian forest sectors (Nilssona and Bull 2005; Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) - Questions and Answers 2004; CIBC World Markets 2005), while commissioning separate analyses on their comparative environmental regulations (Cashore and McDermott 2004). Similarly, environmental groups tend to focus campaigns on a specific issue, or target a select group of companies, and tend to limit economic analyses to questions that help them increase their particular campaign and focus (Schwindt and Heaps 1996). While such compartmentalization may reduce the task of the policy analyst, it may have the inadvertent impact of promoting policy decisions geared toward short term solutions. For instance, a logging ban in China has resulted in increased illegal logging throughout the region and expanded logging in neighboring countries. Similarly, some alliances that focus on short term strategies, such as the informal coalition among select US forest companies and environmental groups, may have unintended impacts and undermine other policy efforts, such as the promotion of restrictions on raw log exports). How then, ought the various members of the BC forest policy community act? Are specific organizational objectives achieved by making relatively short term strategic choices? Or, are economic, environmental,

The global comparison of forest policies covered in an earlier section of this report clearly illustrate how many of the forest policies within key developing countries and countries in transition contain relatively high thresholds for environmental performance. The California effect in this context refers to the overall improvement of forest governance rather than simply an increase in regulatory requirements.
hope that the California effect will be adequate and sustainable, whereby short term interests alone will resolve this problem. However, many ENGOs and some government interests insist that a broader vision is critical to address the crisis of global forest deterioration and prevent further irreparable damage to the worlds forests and forest dependent communities. This broader, more community-based vision would argue for significant investments in sensitizing global wood products markets and creating economic opportunities and alternatives for lesser developed countries. Based on these conclusions, therefore, we provide the following examples of actions that could be taken to accelerate progress in the global campaign against illegal logging. Increase Canadian investments in FLEG processes
To date, Canada has restricted most of its efforts in FLEG processes to the East and North Asian region. Given the current stalemate over a global forest convention, government and industry interests might consider focusing more attention on other FLEG processes as well as a means to ratchet up global environmental policies. ENGO involvement, meanwhile, is critical to ensure that these processes are not used simply to legitimize the status quo among developed country participants. Partner with other countries in multi-lateral trade agreements, develop procurement policies and explore other demand side reforms
North American interests would further contribute to a California effect if they would follow the EU example and place more emphasis on demand side reform. US wood product imports certainly dwarf those of Canada. While Canadian demand side reform might therefore have a lesser impact, it should also be much easier to achieve. Should producer and consumer countries succeed in developing voluntary partnership agreements via the UK model or some other method, Canada could join such agreements and form a tri-lateral or multi-lateral partnership. Meanwhile, industry and ENGOs in both the US and Canada can continue to support demand side reform through innovative partnerships as well as adoption of forest certification and its accompanying procurement policies. Climate Change Our review above revealed that the majority of actions on climate change thus far have been limited to short-term, self-interested activities with no-to-little incorporation of long-term strategies. Climate change will pose great uncertainty in daily decisions, from planning management plots to selection of planting stock, and forest managers, industry, environmental groups, and governments will have little choice but to collaborate in more long-term strategic thinking if ecosystems and livelihoods are to be sustained in a changing climate. In an effort to move all climate actors forward in embracing long-term strategic behavior, we propose the following three recommendations. They are not comprehensive, as there are numerous steps industry, environmental, and governmental stakeholders can take to mitigate and adapt to climate change. However, if these three recommendations were adopted, they would significantly advance Canadas position -- including its provincial governments, industry, forest managers, and civil society in confronting global climate change. We therefore observe that it is critical to: Develop a post-2012 climate policy with long-term binding emissions reduction targets