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As a response to forest conflict, contemporary remapping refers to re-evaluations of resource values, new and diverse forms of governance among stakeholders, and compromises within patterns of land use that give greater emphasis to environmental and cultural priorities. This paper elaborates the processes of remapping by examining the role of institutional innovation in conflict resolution, with particular reference to the iconic Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia. After years of conflict and protest, peace in the Great Bear Rainforest was heralded by an interim agreement in 2006, with final ratification likely in 2016. Conceptually, a four-legged stakeholder model identifies the main institutional interests and their interactions through learning and bargaining. New forms of governance were created to bring the stakeholders together in constructive dialogue and then to reach and implement acceptable bargains. Analytically, the paper examines how this agreement has worked in practice by reflecting on the emergence of novel institutions that integrate the interests of key stakeholders. The discussion identifies six bilateral negotiations between: industrial and environmental interests; federal and provincial governments and aboriginal peoples; government and environmental interests; government and industry; industry and aboriginal peoples; and environmental groups and local communities. The remapping process has produced a thickening architecture of institutions that remain experimental even as they seek to promote sustainability, resilience and legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resource peripheries that are geographically remote from “core economies” are also peripheral to contemporary theorizing in economic geography, and requires higher profile within economic geography's research agenda. The restructuring qua remapping of resource peripheries is collectively shaped by institutional forces unleashed by post-Fordism and globalization that are fundamentally different from the restructuring of cores. As industrial regions, resource peripheries must negotiate the imperatives of flexibility and neoliberalism from vulnerable, dependent positions on geographic margins. For many resource peripheries, neoliberalism has been perversely associated with trade protectionism. As resource regions, the restructuring of resource peripheries has been further complicated by resource-cycle dynamics and radically new social attitudes toward the exploitation of resources that have helped spawn the politics of environmentalism and aboriginalism. Trade, environmental, and aboriginal politics have clashed around the world to contest vested industrial interests and remap resource peripheries in terms of their value systems. British Columbia's forest economy illustrates this contested remapping. For two decades, the powerful forces of neoliberalism, environmentalism, and aboriginalism have institutionalized a “war in the woods” of British Columbia that is sustained by shared criticism of provincial policy and disagreement over how remapping should proceed. The authority of the provincial government, which controls British Columbia's forests, has been undermined, but it remains vital to socially acceptable remapping. Meanwhile, the enduring war in the woods testifies that geography matters on the periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]