Search

Impacts and losses as a result of climate hazards are experienced unevenly across communities and can prove devastating to the health and well-being of local residents. Contextual approaches for understanding vulnerability and adaptation have focused on why diverse individuals and groups experience the effects of climate change differently, while values-based approaches place emphasis on identifying the subjective values individuals and communities wish to preserve. Both approaches contribute to locally responsive adaptation, but are rarely applied simultaneously. In this paper, we propose intersectionality as a framework that links and builds upon contextual and values-based approaches and demonstrate its efficacy through an empirical example of a major wildfire event in northern Saskatchewan, Canada. An intersectional framework identified how impacts and losses to locally significant values differed across intersections of location, race, ethnicity, gender and age and how these differences were influenced by broader social structures and power relationships, such as histories of colonization and gendered norms and expectations. Practical implications for the development of inclusive and equitable adaptation policy and planning were also identified, including the need to: (a) expand the range of impacts considered and recognize how outcomes differ across social groups; (b) enhance diverse community members' participation in planning efforts, and (c) acknowledge and build upon what local residents are already doing in response to hazards in their communities. Key policy insights Failure to consider how impacts and invisible losses are experienced across intersections of identity can lead to adaptation policy and practice that reinforce existing social inequalities. An intersectional analysis revealed a suite of context-specific, locally-relevant values and systems of power that shaped how communities experience, respond to, and plan for climate hazards. The application of an intersectional framework can provide practical direction for adaptation policy that: (1) responds to differing experiences and values across social groups; (2) recognizes agency and builds on what people are already doing; and, (3) addresses root causes of vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers and advocates have long argued that on-going engagement by broad segments of the public can help make forests and forest-based communities more sustainable and decisions more enduring. In Canada, public engagement in sustainable forest management has primarily taken one of two approaches: advisory forums through forest-sector advisory committees (FACs) and direct decision-making authority through community forest boards (CFBs). The purpose of this paper is to compare these two approaches by focusing on who participates and the values that participants bring to their deliberations. We conducted a national survey of FACs and CFBs involving 402 participants. Results showed that both models favoured well-educated, Caucasian men and fell short on the representation of women and Indigenous peoples. Additionally, despite different levels of authority in relation to forest management decisions, participants in CFBs and FACs shared similar forest values. Hence, we conclude that neither model of forest governance encourages participation from a diverse public. Our findings suggest the need to find new ways of recruiting diverse participants and to investigate more deeply whether local and extra-local pressures and power dynamics shape these processes. Such information can inform the establishment of more robust institutions for decision-making in support of sustainable forest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although researchers now recognize that Indigenous knowledge can strengthen environmental planning and assessment, little research has empirically demonstrated how to bring together Indigenous knowledge and Western science to form a more complete picture of social-ecological change. This study attempts to fill this gap by using 'two-eyed seeing' – an approach that brings together Indigenous and Western perspectives on an equal basis – to collect and analyze changes in the Saskatchewan River Delta since upstream dams were built in the 1960s. Results found corroboration across the knowledge systems that operation of dams has lowered summer flows and created unnaturally high winter flows. The knowledge systems, however, diverged in some areas, such as the production of northern pike, where local residents observed abundant pike but records showed the pike commercial harvest declining to near zero. Indigenous knowledge alone provided information about berries and berry seasons. This two-eyed seeing approach can enhance environmental assessment and planning by providing a more accurate and coherent narrative of long-term social-ecological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social and ecological change in Canada's north challenges Indigenous communities to develop responses that secure the continuation of their livelihoods. Although there is significant evidence that effective response and adaptation opportunities exist in Indigenous communities, understanding of how such locally developed adaptations are constructed remains limited. This paper develops and applies the concept of bricolage to demonstrate how Indigenous societies build their adaptive capacity to address long‐term social‐ecological change. Our concept bridges institutional and productive forms of bricolage to explain how individuals and households make conscious decisions and adjustments to retain their livelihoods. The results of long‐term engagement with residents of Cumberland House, Saskatchewan through field observations, oral histories, and semi‐structured interviews demonstrate that Indigenous peoples improvise, hybridize, contest, and negotiate existing practices to create different kinds of adaptive arrangements. We find, further, that whereas certain livelihood practices have changed, cultural norms such as respect and reciprocity have remained. Our findings strengthen the argument that Indigenous peoples are well‐positioned to take direct roles in adaptation; hence, decision makers should consider them equal partners in adaptation decisions and learn from locally developed responses to focus adaptation planning on the relevant needs of Indigenous communities. Key Messages: We demonstrate a new platform for understanding cultural dimensions of social‐ecological change.The paper reveals that Indigenous peoples improvise, hybridize, contest, and negotiate existing practices to create different kinds of adaptive arrangements.We dispense with the perception of Indigenous peoples as helpless victims of change and support the argument that they are well positionedd to take direct roles in adaptation decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rivers and dams are increasingly contested venues where knowledge pluralism is critical for effective governance. To navigate change, decision-makers can adopt culturally-sensitive interventions to address the needs of diverse stakeholders and rights holders. Calls for Indigenous flows have become important as dam operators seek to renew their legal and social licenses to operate. Knowledge pluralism is needed to enhance decision-making about flows that better address complexity and change to Indigenous livelihoods and cultural practices. However, leveraging diverse knowledge types to inform these interventions is not simply a matter of changing management practice. Power relations can constrain knowledge pluralism. We contribute an empirical example that links power in a decision-making process about a dam in Saskatchewan, Canada, to the losses experienced by downstream Indigenous communities. This paper operationalizes power to illustrate its methodological utility and documents the interconnected losses, experienced by resources users, resultant from the marginalization of Indigenous knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability scientists argue that diverse knowledge holders should work together in social learning processes to co-produce knowledge in support of sustainability. Yet,howto co-produce such knowledge remains unexplored. A multi-year, national knowledge sharing partnership among Canadian biosphere reserve practitioners, academic researchers and policy advisors revealed that a skilled facilitator was necessary for successful knowledge co-production. We draw attention to the multiple barriers to learning and knowledge co-production, and to the skills required of the facilitator to address them. The facilitator helped draw together local and formalized western knowledge systems (weaving) and diffuse innovations across local sites (out-scaling) and between local sites and the broader program network (up-scaling). Our experience reveals that simply bringing parties together will not generate transformative change for sustainability. Rather, multi-lateral facilitators are needed to ensure deliberate and managed interventions and to institutionalize learning across a diverse collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the concept of sustainability broadens to include social aspects, sustainability organisations must embrace strategies that allow them to more effectively address community issues and procedural concerns. Biosphere reserves (BRs) and model forests (MFs) advocate strongly for community engagement to achieve place-based sustainability; in practice, however, these organisations have had variable success in effectively engaging community residents and addressing their needs and interests. In this paper, we offer a framework for place-based governance for sustainability that is used to compare strategies used in BRs and MFs operating in the Maritime Provinces of Canada with the operations of Vibrant Communities, an anti-poverty organisation that operates locally in Saint John, New Brunswick. We draw attention to three imperatives: comprehensive understanding, community empowerment, and community-based outcomes, and five procedural drivers: local leadership, strong networks, diverse community engagement, learning together, and information sharing. Based on our results, we provide greater clarity on processes that address the imperatives and mobilise the drivers of effective place-based governance for sustainability. Our results suggest that there is a need for theory and practice to advance beyond current understandings of sustainability governance to enhance the capacity of organisations seeking to implement community-based sustainability strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consensus-based multi-stakeholder forms of environmental governance involving government, private and civil society actors, have become popular for advancing sustainability, but have been criticized for failing to achieve procedural justice objectives including recognition, participation and strengthening capabilities. Yet, how such models have functioned within non-governmental organizations dedicated to advancing sustainability has been underexplored. This paper assesses the procedural elements of consensus-based multi-stakeholder models used within Canadian biosphere reserves and model forests, two organizations working to address environment and sustainability issues. We draw on strategic documents and semi-structured interviews from five organizations in Canada to analyze their governance structures and processes against a framework for procedural justice. We find the organizational structure reproduces elitism and professionalism associated with stakeholder models more generally and reproduces challenges associated with recognition, participation and building capabilities found in other stakeholder approaches. Meeting broader sustainability challenges requires organizations to address procedural justice issues in addition to their traditional environmental concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research and policy landscape for biodiversity conservation is changing. Protected areas are now expected to meet a broad range of objectives including effective and equitable management. In this new landscape, organizations strive to find ways to ensure the rights of local and Indigenous peoples are respected while conservation scientists have endorsed the need for platforms for international research and practice. For 40 years, a growing international network of sites support such research and practice, yet, it has been underutilized and largely ignored by scientists and decision-makers alike. To better understand this paradox, this article explores the evolution of the World Network of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves internationally and its application in Canada. Analysis of archived materials, a national survey of practitioners, and interviews with past and present members of Canada's national committee reveals an expanded mandate for biosphere reserves beyond conservation science and biodiversity protection. The article recommends that to support the expanded conservation agenda, biosphere reserves work with governments and conservation scientists to connect more effectively with global concerns and initiatives such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and Sustainable Development Goals; establish appropriate, reliable, and active transdisciplinary partnerships; and meaningfully engage a broader range of knowledge holders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability-oriented organizations have typically adopted governance approaches that undertake community participation and collaboration through multistakeholder arrangements. Documented challenges of this model are associated with collaboration and institutional capacity, and include reactive accountability structures, inability to reach consensus, funding limitations, and lack of innovation. Social entrepreneurship is a model used successfully in other social sectors; yet, it has rarely been explored by sustainability-oriented organizations. Nevertheless, research in other sectors has found that social entrepreneurship models of governance can encourage diverse participation from a wide range of social groups. In this paper we consider the value of social entrepreneurship for sustainability-oriented organizations by examining whether it can help address governance-related challenges associated with collaboration and institutional capacity. Analysis of organizational documents and participant interviews in three biosphere reserves in Atlantic Canada revealed that, over time, these organizations have struggled to maintain their mission objectives, retain productivity, and respond to economic stress. By examining social entrepreneurship theory and its practice in a biosphere reserve in northern Quebec, we learned that social entrepreneurship strategies more effectively target values and expertise, encourage meaningful engagement, foster strategic direction, and promote diversified and stable funding models than the stakeholder models explored. We determined there are opportunities to develop hybrid governance models that offer the benefits of social entrepreneurship while addressing the procedural concerns outlined by the stakeholder model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative forest governance enables forest-based communities access to and management responsibilities for forestry resources. Researchers argue that processes that enable social learning have the potential to contribute to the sustainable management of forests by engaging local people, helping them identify their collective needs and gain access to resource entitlements, and encouraging them to learn about and implement different management options. Although there is considerable attention to gender in the literature on collaborative forestry, particularly in developing countries, there is relatively little attention to gender in the social learning literature. Furthermore, there is almost no attention to these issues in postindustrial countries. Our purpose was to better understand how gender affects social learning and collaborative forest governance in forest-based communities in Canada and Uganda. Results showed that most participants in both countries started engaging in collaborative forest governance with limited knowledge and learned as they participated in various activities. However, we found that social learning opportunities and outcomes were affected by gender; in addition, they were also affected by the values that people held, education, and literacy. We suggest that practitioners should consider gender and other axes of difference if they want to design collaborative forest governance initiatives that are both participatory and inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deliberation, dialogue and systematic learning are now considered attributes of good practice for organizations seeking to advance sustainability. Yet we do not know whether organizations that span spatial scales and governance responsibilities can establish effective communities of practice to facilitate learning and action. The purpose of this paper is to generate a framework that specifies actions and processes of a community of practice designed to instill collective learning and action strategies across a multi-level, multi-partner network. The framework is then used to describe and analyze a partnership among practitioners of Canada's 16 UNESCO biosphere reserves, and additional researchers and government representatives from across Canada. The framework is a cycle of seven action steps, beginning and ending with reflecting on and evaluating present practice. It is supported by seven characteristics of collaborative environmental management that are used to gauge the success of the partnership. Our results show that the partnership successfully built trust, established shared norms and common interest, created incentives to participate, generated value in information sharing and willingness to engage, demonstrated effective flow of information, and provided leadership and facilitation. Key to success was the presence of a multi-lingual facilitator who could bridge cultural differences across regions and academia-practitioner expectations. The project succeeded in establishing common goals, setting mutual expectations and building relations of trust and respect, and co-creating knowledge. It is too soon to determine whether changes in practices that support sustainability will be maintained over the long term and without the help of an outside facilitator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyses of climate change and the forest sector have identified the importance of individual actors, institutions, and organizations within communities for effective adaption and climate mitigation. Yet, there remains little recognition of how the internal dynamics of these institutions and organizations are influenced by gender and other social considerations such as age and culture. Research from developing countries and cognate resource sectors suggests that these considerations are critical for enhancing local adaptive capacity. Despite extensive review of forestry research across North America and western Europe, we found almost no research that addresses how differential social capabilities within forest-based communities affect adaptation to climate change. In this paper, we document the potential that gender sensitivity might provide to conceptions and practical applications of adaptive capacity and identify four types of research opportunities to address this gap: ( i) developing disaggregated capitals frameworks; ( ii) creating inclusive models; ( iii) informing social planning; and ( iv) understanding gender mainstreaming. Research focused on these opportunities, among others, will provide more robust theoretical understanding of adaptive capacity and strategic interventions necessary for effective adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, the authors consider whether sustainability-in-practice might be one way to replace the culture of nature in the common terrain of interdisciplinary Canadian and environmental studies. The authors first describe debates focussed on wilderness preservation, drawing attention to key conceptual, practical, and ethical challenges that preservation rhetoric can pose. In particular, wilderness preservation campaigns lack consideration of social and economic dimensions now deemed critical to long-term sustainability. The authors consider whether sustainability as practised by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) biosphere reserves in Canada might offer a means to address those challenges. Using evidence from UNESCO documents, interviews with Canadian biosphere reserve founders, and a survey of present-day practitioners, the authors provide a short history of biosphere reserves, drawing attention to changes overtime in their concept, practices, and ethics. The authors then discuss the priorities and effectiveness of present biosphere reserve managers and consider how they match up with the three imperatives of sustainability (economic, environmental, social). Their findings suggest that biosphere reserves face challenges similar to those of nature protection movements, particularly over the social dimension of sustainability. The authors conclude that there is much to be learned: studying sustainability-in-practice offers fertile ground for environmental and Canadian studies scholars to meet beyond the culture of nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role of local field offices of Parks Canada in shaping collaborative management of human–wildlife interactions in two national parks. Previous studies suggest that understanding collaborative management involves attention to local context. By reviewing the approaches to collaboration adopted by the field offices of Grasslands National Park and Riding Mountain National Park, we draw attention to how national policies and decision-making approaches adaptedwithinthe field offices affected environmental and social outcomes. Both cases were deemed successful in achieving positive environmental outcomes. However, Grasslands National Park was more successful in achieving positive social outcomes. This success was due, in large part, to the ways in which local field personnel at Grasslands ensured local people were informed, included, and engaged in the conservation initiative. Our findings suggest local particularities in how broad-based governing agencies interpret and execute their mandates are important elements of “local context.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, scholars have noted a broadening of environmental justice research, both geographically and conceptually, to include global issues that expand beyond the spatial distributions of environmental ‘goods' and ‘bads' to include other dimensions including recognition, participation, and capabilities. The purpose of this report is to consider how this broadening has influenced research topics and themes, the geographic locations of researchers, and the future course of environmental justice research. We searched for articles identifying environmental justice as a keyword from 2000 to 2009 in Scopus, Web of Science, and GeoBase. While the number of articles published looking at environmental justice has increased over the past decade, our search contradicts the previous claims that environmental justice research has greatly expanded conceptually or geographically beyond its traditional origins. Our findings show that environmental justice research remains firmly rooted in the United States, focusing on the distributional aspects of environmental harms. We introduce alternative research methodologies that can be used to inform a more holistic and just approach to research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of significant interest by scholars in environmental geography and in studies of social-ecological systems in the multiscalar, multistakeholder aspects of environmental decision-making, we focus this review on multilevel systems of environmental governance in which multiple actors exercise different levels of power, authority, and action to determine ‘who gets what’ and ‘who gets to decide’. We describe literature documenting how new geographies of governance have emerged as state functions have been dispersed upwards, downwards, and outwards to non-state actors. We consider ‘What is the role of the state in this reconfiguration of scale and environmental governance?’ We focus on how scale and spatiality is being reconceptualized and how borders are reformed materially and socially through new governance practices, and consider the implications for advancing geographic theory and sound public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how environmental justice and political ecology are setting a rich body of work by turning their focus on to some questions and issues that have been explored in the context of developing countries. Environmental scholars of the third world suggest that gender remains one of the major hurdles of inequality they had assessed such as gender role making, gender relations or gender identity. One question focused on gender as a significant factor in understanding the geographies of environmental disasters as well as to other forms of human-environmental management, policy and practice.

The presents the views of the authors on the statements made by Ben Bradshaw concerning the definitions of success and contingencies which affect success in community forestry. The authors agree with Bradshaw on the implication that community forestry must be deemed a success where jobs and revenues were created, even if in some tendencies some objectives were not achieved. They point out that Bradshaw's reference to the work of Adcharaporn Pagdee who conducted a meta-analysis of 69 community forestry around the world, indicates that the relation of expertise, experience and leadership to success in community forest, remains undersearched. The role of experience, leadership and expertise is undertheorized and requires more research.

Community-based ecosystem management requires understanding a community's capacity. We argue that communities can make important contributions not only to specific assessments of community capacity, but also to the conceptualization of the term itself through community-based research methods that are both adaptive and reflexive. A research initiative that illustrates such practices is reported here. We begin by describing our initial conceptual framework of community capacity that identified resource capitals and mobilizing factors. In focus groups, residents of two Canadian biosphere reserves used this framework to assess their capacity to meet biosphere reserve mandates and to provide critical reflections that helped to drive revisions to the framework. Our new framework is more sensitive to temporal and spatial dimensions of capacity, local social relations, and local culture. We conclude that adaptive and reflexive community-based offer methodological alternatives for research, help advance conceptions of community capacity, and help produce social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I argue the need for feminist and environmental geographers to work more diligently to find, mind and tend the intersections of their research agendas to enrich scholarship and deepen impacts on public policy. Such a project requires us to move beyond an obvious call to acknowledge one another's work and towards the boundaries of our respective fields in order to co-create ‘boundary objects’ that provide opportunities for mutual exchange, collaboration and learning. Rather than being ‘red herrings’ or diversions from our main research foci, boundary objects bring new insights to taken-for-granted concepts. I focus on one example to argue that social sustainability of rural places is better understood by an integrated understanding of what constitutes a ‘worker’ in a forestry community. A redefinition of the worker that draws on insights and interests from both environmental and feminist geographers reveals an underlying gender bias in environmental decision-making processes and illustrates how the concept of social sustainability has been artificially restricted in practice. Nevertheless, collaborations are never easy. I draw attention to potential challenges of such collaborations that include the need to establish mutually agreeable protocols, joint commitment to constructive, respectful debate and strategies to ensure that research provides meaningful contributions to theory and public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary researchers of environmental management argue for community-based approaches in which local circumstances, skills, and concerns are respected. However, relying on local capacity opens up the possibility of establishing highly uneven management practices. The purpose of this paper is to explore the roots and effects of uneven environmental management. I develop a conceptual framework that identifies key elements of regional environmental-management regimes and then use it to compare experiences in two areas designated as Canadian biosphere reserves in 2000: Clayoquot Sound, BC, and Redberry Lake, SK. Analysis reveals that differences in property instruments and civic sectors affect the institutional capacity of each locality, opening the door for private forms of environmental governance in Redberry Lake. To explain how property instruments and civic actors operate, I illustrate how processes associated with property exchange, reterritorialization, valuation, and planning work together to produce a relatively robust and public regime at Clayoquot Sound and a more private form of stewardship at Redberry Lake. In consequence, uneven environ- mental-management practices may take root and reinforce social inequalities across the two regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While stakeholder involvement in environmental management is now common, we suggest that stakeholders can contribute to a pluralistic civic science that incorporates local knowledge directly into environmental decision making and research. We consider how insights from feminist scholarship might help us to understand the influence of power relations among our subjects of study and in determining how scientific knowledge is defined and used. We pay particular attention to how knowledge is produced, how participation is constrained, and to what extent community participants and researchers would benefit from critical reflection in their work. We apply these elements to an assessment of a community forestry pilot project in Burns Lake, British Columbia, Canada. Our findings suggest that while local participants have considered community forestry effective, practices have not met the ideals of a pluralistic civic science. We identify some of the reasons for this discrepancy and provide suggestions for future practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I provide a sympathetic, yet skeptical, examination of the perspectives of women who seek to protect industrial forestry. Feminist scholars have tended to focus on women who are involved in nature protection campaigns leaving the impression that women do or should be solely involved in environmental protection. Using the concept of moral exclusion, I argue that women''s efforts to protect industrial forestry can be understood as both a politics of opposition and a politics of affirmation of rural culture, embedded within circumstances that are particular to specific places. Turning to a study of women living in forestry communities on northern Vancouver Island, Canada, I illustrate how rhetoric and strategies of moral exclusion get played out. I suggest that understanding these dynamics helps to interpret and overcome divisions between environmental and anti-environmental positions. Feminist research strategies of sympathy and engagement with the subject are key to this understanding. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Discusses the efforts to link feminists to environmental geographers in Canada. Failure of environmental geographers to introduce gender as an analytical category in their research; Identification of feminist research approaches that should also be pursued in environmental geography; Consideration of examples of how feminist perspectives might be incorporated in themes of environmental geography.

Compares the forest policies of Oregon and British Columbia using a resource cycle model. Pitfalls associated with invoking some version of a resource cycle model; Comparison between regional economic and forest industry structures, forest governance, environmental and political cultures of BC and Oregon; Political and social dimensions of resource appropriation in relation to ecological change.

The author examines alternative and possibly contradictory positions associated with 'other' women's political activism in forestry and land use debates. The article traces research on women's activism, noting that the main focus has been placed on community management and social mothering as sources of motivation, political perspective and activity. The author suggests that these explanations have been imbued with a predetermination of appropriate action (progressiveness) that effectively renders as radical the activism by some women while ignoring the activism by others. This separation and privileging has arisen, in part, because of a theoretical preoccupation by feminist researchers with illustrating women's marginality and an empirical focus on public actions. When feminist perspectives have been applied to women's participation in environmental debates, there has been a narrowing of visibility of women's motivations, perspectives, and actions. It is argued that feminist conceptions need to go beyond maternal/community explanations and advocate that activism be considered in terms of its embeddedness in local social and spatial contexts. The author suggests that embeddedness overcomes the implicit reverse hierarchy of marginalisation discourses and includes both private and public spaces and actions in conceptions of women's activism. Turning to northern Vancouver Island, the author illustrates how embeddedness helps to render visible and intelligible, the multiplicity, consistencies and contradictions in women's positions and activities in support of conventional forestry. For these reasons, the author believes that embeddedness is useful as a means to generate dialogue across current divisions among women, forms of activism, and notions of appropriate relations with non-human nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous nations worldwide are working with and lobbying private and public resource developers to ensure meaningful engagement in decisions tied to resource development in their territories. The diversity of approaches for engagement can be framed along a continuum, with voluntary practices at one end and legal responsibilities at the other. Given this continuum, the roles and responsibilities of various actors involved have become blurred, which leads to poor practice. In an effort to bring clarity, the aim of this research was to understand the distinctions between voluntary practices and legal responsibilities among key actors, identify how key actors understood their different roles and responsibilities, and explain the implications of these differences. In partnership with a First Nation and a public power utility in Northern Saskatchewan, Canada, we employed semi-structured interviews and group workshops with Indigenous, industry, and government actors who participate in environmental management and resource development decisions. We found that actors had distinct motivations for interacting with one another, that perceptions of voluntary practices and legal responsibilities aligned among some participants but not among others, and that participants were indeed confused about their roles and responsibilities in relation to legal requirements and voluntary engagement activities. Furthermore, we learned that clarifying the intended roles of those involved in resource development decisions would be insufficient for improving practice. This is because improved clarity may not address underlying mistrust of government by Indigenous people, or may not be possible where rights and interests are intertwined under a broad conception of Indigenous rights. Findings also suggest the need for government and industry to work with Indigenous nations as self-determining entities, rather than imposing unilateral processes upon them. Consequently, more serious scrutiny, understanding and action is needed by government and industry when employing and assessing voluntary actions and legal measures for Indigenous inclusion in resource development decision-making processes. • Legal-voluntary continuum explains Indigenous participation in resource development • Motivations differ for collaboration among actors in resource development decisions • Ambiguity in definitions, roles and responsibilities complicate decision-making • Existing processes for Indigenous engagement and consultation need improvement • Clarification of roles and responsibilities is insufficient to improve processes [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses changes to land use in Canada, focusing on the engendering programs. Links between planning and gender as they apply to land use reallocations; Establishment of the Commission on Resources and Environment in 1992, to develop a framework for land use planning at the provincial level; Details on feminist perspectives in environmental and land use planning.

Analyzes the political dynamics of a hinterland locality and a provincial government in Northern Ontario participating together in a co-management initiative to formulate environmental resource policies. Creation of tension between free movement of capital and community stability by global economic change; Competitive struggles affecting political dynamics at the local level.

Addressing environmental problems through conventional expert and scientific approaches alone is largely ineffective. Therefore, Canadian forest management has evolved to include governance processes such as public advisory committees. Public participation is mandated by federal and provincial policy and is a key part of forest certification processes. In this context, self-reports of committee effectiveness and satisfaction are common indicators of meaningful governance. Yet we often know very little about what people mean when they indicate that a process is effective. Using a 2016 national survey of PAC members across Canada (n = 345), empirical findings confirm that personal perceptions of fairness, inclusion, and (to a lesser extent) social learning determines individual judgments of committee effectiveness and satisfaction. Policy recommendations include a sharper focus on social learning as a key governance outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public advisory committees (PACs) are a dominant form of public participation in Canada's Crown forests, providing a venue in which members of the local public can engage and influence sustainable forest management decision-making. In this paper, we examine the experiences of Indigenous participants (relative to non-Indigenous participants) concerning the success of PAC processes. We focus on issues of fairness, equity, and inclusion of Indigenous voices along with an assessment of forest values diversity. Findings from surveys in 2004 and 2016 indicate statistically significant differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous PAC members regarding their forest values and their evaluation of the success of PAC processes. This work draws attention to the relative experiences of survey participants and the identification of persistent challenges associated with public engagement over the last two decades. Policy recommendations include substantial changes to how we define and measure sustainable forest management in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving student competencies to address sustainability challenges has been a subject of significant debate in higher education. Problem- and project-based learning have been widely celebrated as course models that support the development of sustainability competencies. This paper describes a course developed for a professional Master’s program in environment and sustainability that employs such a model. Additionally, the course was designed to offer value-added opportunities by introducing attributes of interdisciplinary training, service learning, academic research, and professional practice. Results from the course assessments by students, faculty, community clients and organizational partners show this model provided a range of learning, professional and practical outcomes for course partners. The value-added benefits include strengthening sustainability competencies and professional skills for students; longitudinal research opportunities for teaching faculty; real-time assessments of farming practices for community clients; and a heightened regional profile for the non-profit biosphere reserve organization supporting course delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review how Canadian Model Forests pursued forest and community sustainability over the course of two decades (1992-2012). Given its roots in the forest industry and forest science, Model Forest programming initially faced some challenges in pursuing the socio-economic dimensions of sustainable forest management ( SFM) in order to fulfil mandated community sustainability objectives. This was due, in part, to how objectives, stakeholders, and expertise were brought together to develop SFM. The programme helped to define sustainability and the SFM paradigm, advance forest science and social research, and bring together a mix of usually adversarial partners in the name of innovation. Ultimately, the termination of federal programming was linked to high-level policy shifts, yet difficulty in delivering on the socio-economic dimensions of SFM during a period of forest sector and community crisis was also a factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The plethora of contributions to social learning has resulted in a wide range of interpretations, meanings and applications of social learning, both within and across disciplines. However, advancing the concept and using social learning methods and tools in areas like disaster-shocks requires interdisciplinary consolidation of understandings. In this context, the primary focus of this paper is on the contributions of social learning to disaster risk reduction (DRR). Design/methodology/approach: By applying a three-round policy Delphi process involving 18 purposefully selected scholars and expert-practitioners, the authors collected data on the meanings of social learning for two groups of professionals, DRR and social-ecological resilience. The survey instruments included questions relating to the identification of the core elements of social learning and the prospects for enhancing social-ecological resilience. Findings: The results revealed strong agreement that (1) the core elements of social learning indicate a collective, iterative and collaborative process that involves sharing/networking, changes in attitudes and knowledge and inclusivity; (2) social learning from disasters is unique; and (3) linkages between disciplines can be built by promoting interdisciplinarity, networks and knowledge platforms; collaboration and coordination at all levels; and teaching and practicing trust and respect. Social learning is useful in preparing for and responding to specific disaster events through communication; sharing experience, ideas and resources; creating synergies for collective action and promoting resilience. Research limitations/implications: The policy Delphi process involved a limited number of participants to control the quality of the data. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind to identify the core elements of social learning, specifically, in the disaster-shock context. It also makes significant contributions to the interdisciplinary integration issues. Practical implications: The practical implications of this study are related to pre-disaster planning and mitigation through the application of social learning on disaster-shocks. Social implications: The social implications of this study are related to valuing social learning for the improvement of disaster planning, management, and policy formulation and implementation in reducing disaster risks. Originality/value: The study provides a consensus view on the core elements of social learning and its role in DRR and resilience building. Relevant to all stages of DRR, social learning is best characterized as a collective, iterative and collaborative process. It can be promoted by enhancing networking and interdisciplinarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the public advisory committee has become a very common tool for involving local people in forest management decisions, it does not necessarily broaden the base of public input and may simply replicate the challenges of access, representation, and capacity to participate that are found in wider society. As a category of social exclusion, this study explores why women are significantly underrepresented on forest management advisory committees in Canada and how these committees function as gendered units. Research involved 25 semistructured interviews with members (and former members) of two forest management advisory committees: Tembec in Manitoba and NewPage in Nova Scotia. The strongest evidence in our study suggests that these committees operate within male-dominated institutions and particular masculine norms that are simply taken for granted. Thus, social relations based on gender often go unacknowledged. Findings also showed that the lack of critical mass of women often limited the active participation of the small number of women involved in committee activities. Our empirical observations suggest that unless we attend to gender when involving communities in establishing strategies for forest management, we will reinforce gender disadvantage and exclusion and overrepresent industrial and utilitarian interests of forestry over other community and ecocentric values. Bien que les comités directeurs soient devenus des outils de participation du public auxquels on recourt de plus en plus afin d'inclure les populations locales dans le processus décisionnel en aménagement forestier, cela n'élargit pas nécessairement la contribution du public et peut simplement reproduire les défis qu'on retrouve à la grandeur de la société concernant l'accès, la représentation et la capacité à participer. Sous le thème de l'exclusion sociale, cette étude explore pourquoi les femmes sont fortement sous-représentées dans les comités directeurs en aménagement forestier au Canada et comment ces comités fonctionnent en tant qu'entités sexuées. La recherche s'appuie sur 25 entrevues semi-dirigées avec des membres (et ex-membres) de deux comités directeurs en aménagement forestier, soit ceux de Tembec au Manitoba et de NewPage en Nouvelle-Écosse. Le constat le plus manifeste de notre étude indique que ces comités fonctionnent dans le cadre d'institutions à prédominance masculine et où des normes masculines particulières sont tout simplement prises pour acquises. Ainsi, les relations sociales fondées sur le genre passent souvent inaperçues. Les résultats montrent aussi que l'absence de masse critique féminine limite souvent la participation active du petit groupe de femmes qui collaborent aux activités de ces comités. Nos observations empiriques indiquent que, faute de considérer le genre dans la contribution des communautés lors de l'établissement des stratégies d'aménagement, le désavantage envers les femmes et l'exclusion seront renforcés alors que les intérêts industriels et utilitaristes seront surreprésentés au détriment des autres communautés et des valeurs éco-centriques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]