Search

In this paper, we examine the influence of institutional arrangements on the implementation of local land-use allocations which incorporate tourism, recreational, and amenity (TRA) values, using a case study from British Columbia, Canada. We frame this paper within a conceptualization of postproductivism and pose the question to what extent, and under what conditions, are new local stakeholders, new local agencies, and new local processes effective in allocating land uses which reflect TRA values? Three new land-use proposals which incorporate TRA values are examined to determine where key catalysts for implementation lie. We found that, unlike other research in rural areas of Britain, institutions in British Columbia that have conventionally regulated land use continue to exercise their considerable regulatory and discretionary powers. Though new stakeholders, agencies and processes at the local level have had an impact on planning, they have not been effective in reconfiguring the power structures for actual implementation of land reallocation. This lack of efficacy is attributed in part to the common property character of lands that support TRA values, the associated complexity of property rights regimes, and the large number of stakeholders involved. Furthermore, there is a lack of understanding by regulatory agencies of land resources as community resources, and these agencies continue to grant higher priority to the strategic considerations of higher levels of government rather than to local concerns.

Geographers or students of human - environment relations have an important role to play in addressing the questions and issues associated with environmental sustainability. It is the authors' thesis that a central weakness in geography's response to environmental problems and to issues of sustainability is the lack of engagement with questions of ethics. An overall ethic of care, respect, and responsibility is proposed. Within this overarching framework, it is suggested that the society - environment relation may be a scale-dependent problem set, with a separate expression of environmental ethics associated with each scale. For example, an ethic appropriate at the planetary scale may differ from that which is pertinent at the local scale. This argument is advanced through examples from religious and secular interpretations of human - environment relations. In a preliminary way, both moral and technical issues associated with different ethical positions are raised and geographers are challenged to consider and debate their implications. It is concluded that without explicit environmental ethical premises, the sustainability debate is indeterminate.