by David Suzuki
After the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, an intergovernmental negotiating committee was established to meet and work out a framework within which the climate convention could be assessed. In 1995, the Conference of the Parties (cop) to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change was established to meet annually in a different country. At the meetings, terms of the protocol were refined, progress assessed and scientific information updated. The first cop meeting in North America was held in Montreal from the end of November to early December 2005.
Thousands of delegates, NGO participants and press attended, and DSF was a prominent participant. In addition to ten staff members, eight board members took part in the meetings in different capacities. Staff worked diligently to make our position known: the Kyoto process must carry on, emissions in the industrialized nations should be cut by 25 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050 if we are to minimize the consequences of the buildup of greenhouse gases. It was gratifying to see that there was no longer a debate about whether climate change is happening or whether we should reduce our emissions. The big questions were how, and how much by when.
Stephen Bronfman, as a board member, sponsored a breakfast for businesspeople concerned about climate change. More than four hundred people attended to hear another board member, Ray Anderson. As a very successful businessman, Ray could speak to the audience as one of them and his message of “doing well by doing good” resonated strongly with the audience.
Soon after being elected, George W. Bush indicated that he would not ratify Kyoto and wanted to ignore the entire process. By the Montreal meetings, the Protocol had been ratified by enough countries to make it international law. The large U.S. delegation in Montreal had no official status but actively worked to derail the Kyoto Protocol as a failure and to recruit other countries to its plan to seek new, cleaner technologies that would reduce the need to cut back on fossil fuel use. As representatives of the most powerful nation on Earth, the U.S. contingent had a lot of clout, but the country is also the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and therefore has a big responsibility, as Prime Minister Paul Martin stated in his opening address. In the end, despite the American pressure, the rest of the world united to back the Kyoto process and continue the path toward much deeper cuts. It was a crowning achievement for the delegates and may very well be looked back upon as a watershed moment.
MANY OF US IN the David Suzuki Foundation cut our teeth on battles over the future of British Columbia's forests. From South Moresby and Stein Valley to the Khutzeymateen and Clayoquot Sound, one forest after another in pristine areas had become threatened, sparking a public outcry. It seemed natural for the DSF to be involved in forestry issues.
Taking the cue from our work on fisheries, we first asked the question, what is the economic position of forestry in the province today? Even though the number of jobs and relative contribution of tax revenues from forestry were steadily declining, the media continued to widely report that forestry contributed fifty cents of every tax dollar in British Columbia's coffers. Dr. Richard Schwindt and Dr. Terry Heaps, economists at Simon Fraser University, agreed to do an analysis of the forest industry, and we published it in 1996 as “Chopping Up the Money Tree.” They showed that the province's economy had become much more diverse than it was fifty years earlier, and that British Columbia's revenues from forestry were about five cents of every tax dollar.
The rant that environmentalists damage the economy and threaten jobs did not reflect reality. Forestry jobs were being lost, but the volume of wood cut was steadily increasing. The province's chief forester was well aware that logging practices greatly exceeded the renewable level. Huge machines were replacing men and working tirelessly and with deadly efficiency, aided by computers. Worse, despite legislation to prevent the export of raw logs, more and more were being shipped to other countries where high-quality jobs were created to process that wood. Every raw log exported cost B.C. jobs and economic potential. The DSF did an analysis showing that Washington State created two and a half times more employment per tree than did B.C., and California five times more.
It bothered me that Canadians, who have some of the best wood in the world, purchase finished products from Scandinavia. I don't believe we are so backward that we can't develop our own lines of wood products, using our own materials. We should use our precious raw logs far more conservatively and ensure that every tree cut creates a maximum number of jobs.
Jim Fulton recruited the dean of arts at UBC, the distinguished scholar Pat Marchak, to perform an exhaustive analysis of forestry in British Columbia. She ended up writing a book in 1999 with Scott Aycock and Deborah Herbert, Falldown: Forest Policy in British Columbia, widely considered the authoritative document on the subject. Pat concluded that a reduction in the volume of wood cut was needed because the current levels were not sustainable. She recommended that the use of wood be diversified to generate more jobs per cubic yard.
Could an ecoforestry code be established that might allow logging while maintaining the integrity of the forest? In 1990, DSF staff member Ronnie Drever wrote a report published as “A Cut Above,” which outlined nine basic principles of what has since come to be called ecosystem-based management (EBM). Although parks and other protected areas, if sufficiently large and interconnected, can help somewhat to protect the biodiversity that sustains our economies, the future is bleak unless land outside parks is developed carefully and sustainably through EBM.
Even before “A Cut Above,” we knew it was possible to log extensively in a sustainable fashion. Vancouver Island forester Merv Wilkinson has logged his forest selectively since the 1950s and removed the equivalent of his entire forest, yet has more board feet of timber growing now than before he began. In Oregon, the family-owned company Collins Pines has been in forestry for 150 years and today does some US$250 million in annual business, yet its forests are considered among the most pristine in the state. Thousands of employees earn a living from those forests, and the company remains globally competitive though all logging is carried out selectively, not through clear-cutting.
Canadian icon and hero Merv Wilkinson demonstrating
sustainable forestry at his Wildwood farm
But forest companies whose shares are publicly traded on the stock market are driven by the need to maximize return for their investors. There is little incentive to practice sustainable forestry when to do so would mean restricting the volume of trees cut annually to perhaps 2 to 3 percent—nature's annual increase in size. Clear-cutting an entire forest and putting the money in investments would generate double or triple the interest; investing the cash in forestry in Borneo or Papua New Guinea could make perhaps ten times the return. Or the money could be put into something else, like fish, and when they're gone, into biotechnology or computers. Money can grow faster than real trees.
One result of the pressure on forestry companies to reduce their cuts is that increasingly they “high-grade,” logging the most valuable species and ignoring the rest. It's a worldwide problem. In the Amazon, mahogany has been high-graded throughout much of the vast forest. Today in British Columbia, it's clear that companies are high-grading cedar at an unsustainable rate. Cedar occupies such a central place in coastal First Nations culture that the DSF commissioned two studies, “Sacred Cedar” in 1998 and “A Vanishing Heritage” in 2004, that showed how little cedar is being left for traditional use in totem poles, canoes, masks, and longhouses.
We also published a report on culturally modified trees (CMTS), which are trees that have been used by First Nations cultures on the B.C. coast over the millennia. Partially carved canoes emerging out of logs can be found decaying on the ground, and cedar trees still stand that reveal long scars where bark was stripped for clothing; some show vertical house planks have been removed without killing the tree. CMTS are precious artifacts that testify to First Nations occupation and use of the land long before the arrival of Europeans.
In addition to the report, called “The Cultura
l and Archaeological Significance of Culturally Modified Trees,” we initiated an archaeological training program that enrolled dozens of representatives from eleven coastal villages to become CMT technicians. This generated jobs for First Nations communities, as forestry companies, required to inventory and protect these artifacts, hired such trained personnel to identify CMTS within their logging domain on government land.
WE WANTED THE FINDINGS from our reports to reach a wider audience, and in 1994 the foundation met with Greystone Books, a division of Douglas & McIntyre, the highly respected B.C. publisher. The DSF and Greystone would copublish books meant for a wide audience, and although profit was not the foundation's primary goal, we hoped the books would find an audience big enough to make them relatively self-sufficient. By 2005 we had published twenty books on a wide range of issues. It's been a lot of work, but it has been very satisfying to me to have authored or coauthored ten of them.
As the foundation grew, it seemed to me we needed a different kind of book, a philosophical treatise that would define the perspective, assumptions, and values that underlie our activities. As I began to write it, it forced me to consider matters more deeply. The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature brought the fundamental issues into sharp focus for me. To my surprise and delight, the book became a number 1 best-seller in Canada and Australia and continues to sell. As with other books, I signed over my royalties, so that book alone has brought the foundation close to can$200,000 to date.
THE CORNERSTONE OF THE foundation is its relationship with First Nations peoples and communities, and that has remained strong through the years. We understood that the First Nations along the coast of what is now British Columbia have occupied the land for millennia, and that the traditions that had evolved in their relationship with the land would tend to make them better stewards than governments and companies. We also knew that since treaties had never been signed, coastal First Nations should have sovereignty over their land.
Miles Richardson, one of the DSF's founders, is a very political man, having been president of the Haida Nation for twelve years before being appointed chief treaty commissioner for B.C. to encourage progress on treaties between Canada, B.C., and First Nations. Miles is a big man, literally and figuratively, with a formidable intellect, a huge zest for life, and a relish for facing its most difficult problems. He likes to remind us that as human beings we possess foibles, idiosyncrasies, weaknesses, and beauty. He more than anyone has tried to teach me to revel in the here and now and take pleasure in what I am doing in the moment.
When, in 1998, an opportunity arose for the DSF to work on coastal issues in B.C., Miles urged us to look at forming relationships with local First Nations communities so that we could work together and find ways of protecting forests and fish while creating sustainable ways to make a living. With chronic levels of unemployment in Native communities reaching well above 50 percent, even those who have taught us much of what we know about Mother Nature become so deprived of employment and income that they must accept the sacrifice of much of their surroundings. Having cleared the readily accessible trees in the south and around Prince Rupert, forest companies now coveted the rich forests of remote communities in the central and north coast and Haida Gwaii.
In the winter of 1997–98, Jim Fulton asked Tara to step into a staff position. He knew she was the only person who could be the foundation's “diplomat” and establish relationships with the eleven small First Nations communities within the temperate rain forest of the central and north coast and Haida Gwaii. The territory of these communities represented a quarter of all the remaining old-growth temperate rain forest in the world. He believed the best and right way to protect the forests and fish was to work with First Nations to help realize their sovereignty over the territory. Tara and I didn't have the vision Jim and Miles did, and we couldn't clearly understand how the nations would unite, but Tara subordinated her misgivings and began to travel alone into each community to meet the leaders, elders, and families in the villages.
Long before these first forays, Tara (and our family) had already established deep friendships in two of these villages, Skidegate and Bella Bella, as well as Alert Bay and others to the south. We had been adopted by two families and had long felt a responsibility to make a contribution to their villages.
In many First Nations communities, a schism has been created between traditional chiefs, who inherit their position, and the chiefs and band councils elected under rules imposed by the Department of Indian Affairs. We were well aware the traditional chiefs would be supportive, whereas elected councils had to prioritize jobs and development. But we didn't want to exacerbate community division, so we decided to go through the “front door”—the elected councils—hoping to meet the traditional chiefs and elders later with each council's blessing. We wanted to be completely open and forthright in our dealings with each community. In the past, environmentalists had enlisted the support of individual band members to fight to protect certain areas, but when the battle was over, the Native people sometimes had to deal with debt and ill will left behind. Many band councils were understandably suspicious of our motives.
Tara visited these remote villages to explain what the David Suzuki Foundation was and to explore partnerships in areas of common interest. We made no secret that our concern was the conservation of the old-growth forests, but we also acknowledged First Nations sovereignty over them and our willingness to work with First Nations to gain recognition of their rights. We hoped our science, fund-raising activities, and contacts might be useful.
In general Tara was made welcome and treated with respect, but she was sometimes berated by the councils. Once, when she had returned from a trip and I was quizzing her about the experience, she burst into tears as she recalled the loneliness, the pressures, and the humiliation. One band council member had chastised her: “Greenpeace and all you goddamned environmentalists . . .” Many First Nations are understandably wary, having watched a succession of do-gooders like us too often abandon them with promises unfulfilled.
Many of the communities situated in the rain forest in the mid- to north coast of British Columbia are extremely isolated, some reachable only by boat or floatplane. Often they suffer from chronic high unemployment and thus are vulnerable. To secure a small medical center and the promise of a handful of jobs, a community may have to sign agreements that will allow a company to liquidate their forests in a matter of years. One of the most pernicious practices Tara observed in the late '90s was what government and company employees called “consultation.” Forced by the courts to consult First Nations, a company representative would fly into a community, call or bump into a few people and chat about their families, health, and local gossip, then call that a consultation.
Visiting the villages makes one re-examine concepts of wealth and poverty. I once visited a remote village of some two hundred people. When my plane landed, dozens met me at the dock. That night my hosts put on a feast in my honor. Tables sagged under platters piled with salmon, crab, halibut, herring roe, bannock, moose meat, eulachon, clam fritters, dried seaweed, and desserts. After dinner, the head of the band council opened the speeches by saying the band was poor and required money to buy things the people needed; that was why they had allowed logging in their territory.
When it was my turn to speak, I pointed out that in my affluent neighborhood of Vancouver, where there were probably three times as many people in one block as there were in that village, after twenty-five years I knew fewer than twenty of my neighbors by name. There was a park half a block away in which I didn't allow my children to play alone. Our home and car had been broken into several times. Even with thousands of dollars, I said, I could never have bought a feast like the one they had prepared for me. They were rich in what we had lost—community, land, and resources.
Yet Canadians have no right to tell First Nations they should live in some romanticized version of a museum-like state, frozen in time. These are twenty-fi
rst-century people who need boats and motors, computers and plane tickets. Can they protect their traditional values and their surroundings while finding ways to sustainably generate income for the things they need, in a manner acceptable to them? The decisions are theirs.
Although conservation was a serious issue to all the villages, jobs—community economic development (CED)—were the first priority. We accepted this challenge and set about turning ourselves into a CED organization, opening a DSF office in Prince Rupert and hiring Jim MacArthur, and then Sandy Storm, to run it.
AFTER EXTENSIVE RESEARCH for a CED model, we learned of a program called Participatory Action Research (PAR) that we thought might be of interest to the First Nations on the coast. For more than half a century, the program has been used successfully by peoples as diverse as Inuit in the Arctic and Sami in Russia.
PAR is based on a bottom-up philosophy whereby the knowledge, expertise, traditions, and skills within the community form the basis of its economic development. One of the first steps in the process is to hold community workshops to determine what people see as the community's strengths and what they want the community to be a decade or two later. Next, projects are identified and priorities developed. Soon, traditional mapping is used to determine how new jobs can be built from old. The PAR approach identifies a job here, another there, until collectively they add up to a significant number and help to keep the money circulating within the community. A par-trained worker is sent to live for up to three years in the community that is seeking a strategy for economic development. He or she gets to know the people, identifies their skills, abilities, and needs, then works with them to find opportunities and solutions until the adviser is no longer needed.
