Tenure arrangements for facilitating community forestry in British Columbia

Community forestry is a concept whose time has finally 'come' to British Columbia through a convergence of events including: recommendations from forestry commissions; high profile international conferences and publications on sustainability; increased social awareness of forests and forestry; and greater public pressure for community needs to be addressed. This thesis investigates tenure arrangements to facilitate community forestry in British Columbia. BC forest tenures have evolved over the last century and have timber management biases leading to failures in addressing community forest management concerns. To date, community forestry has not played a significant role in forest management in the province. Community, culture, conflict and planning are highly interrelated concepts and understanding their linkages is essential for successful forest and community planning. Community forestry, which with its long history of success can be an integrated planning tool for sustainable forestry. International community forestry is reviewed, with a particular focus on Sweden which has social and economic similarities to Canada. National and provincial surveys are used to determine the levels of awareness and understanding of community forestry. While offering some advantages, there are limited opportunities to exploit existing tenures due to their industrial focus and continuing policy failures, suggesting a need for new community forest tenures. New community forest tenures offer the opportunity to avoid failures associated with previous tenures and the ability to experiment. Community forestry principles are incorporated with theory, literature and survey information to draft the characteristics of new tenures which offer a more effective and flexible policy vehicle to facilitate community forestry.Forestry, Faculty ofGraduat