Community Forestry in Canada: Lessons from Policy and Practice

Author +
ed. Sara Teitelbaum

Year: 2016

In the past three decades, community forestry has taken root across Canada. Locally run initiatives have been lauded as welcome alternatives to large corporate and industrial logging practices, yet little research has been done to document their tangible outcomes or draw connections between their ideals of local control, community benefit, ecological stewardship, and economic diversification and the realities of community forestry practice.

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This book brings together the work of over twenty-five researchers to provide the first comparative and empirically rich portrait of community forestry policy and practice in Canada. Tackling all of the forestry regions from Newfoundland to BC, it unearths the history of community forestry, revealing surprisingly strong regional differences linked to patterns of policy-making and cultural traditions. Case studies celebrate innovative practices in governance and ecological management while uncovering significant challenges related to government support and market access. The future of the industry is also considered, including the role of institutional reform, multiscale networks, and adaptive management strategies.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures
Introduction: A Shared Framework for the Analysis of Community Forestry in Canada
Part 1: Regional Portraits
1 The Roots of Community Forestry: Subsistence and Regional Development in Newfoundland / Erin C. Kelly and Sara Carson
2 Community Forestry in the Maritimes: Long-Standing Debates and Recent Developments / Thomas Beckley
3 Community Forestry in Quebec: A Search for Alternative Forest Governance Models / Solange Nadeau and Sara Teitelbaum
4 Community Forestry on Crown Land in Northern Ontario: Emerging Paradigm or Localized Anomaly? / Lynn Palmer, M.A. (Peggy) Smith and Chander Shahi
5 Forests and Communities on the Fringe: An Overview of Community Forestry in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba / John R. Parkins, Ryan Bullock, Bram Noble, and Maureen G. Reed
6 Community Forestry in British Columbia: From a Movement to an Institution / Lisa Ambus
Part 2: Case Studies: Connecting Principle and Practice
7 Community Forestry in an Age of Crisis: Structural Change, the Mountain Pine Beetle, and the Evolution of the Burns Lake Community Forest / Kirsten McIlveen and Michelle Rhodes 
8 Searching for Common Ground: An Urban Forest Initiative in Northwestern Ontario / James Robson, Mya Wheeler, A. John Sinclair, Alan Diduck, M.A. (Peggy) Smith, and Teika Newton
9 Community Forestry and Local Development at the Periphery: Four Cases from Western Quebec / Édith Leclerc and Guy Chiasson
10 Striking the Balance: Source Water Protection and Organizational Resilience in BC’s Community Forests / Lauren Rethoret, Murray Rutherford, and Evelyn Pinkerton
11 Practicing Participatory Governance through Community Forestry: A Qualitative Analysis of Four Canadian Case Studies / Sara Teitelbaum
Part 3: Community Forestry: Looking Towards the Future
12 Stronger Rights, Novel Outcomes: Why Community Forests Need More Control over Forest Management / Erik Leslie
13 Whither Community Forests in Canada? Scenarios of Forest Governance, Adaptive Policy Development, and the Example of Nova Scotia / Peter N. Duinker and L. Kris MacLellan
14 Towards an Integrated System of Communities and Forests in Canada / Ryan Bullock and Maureen G. Reed
List of Contributors 
Index