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Cortes Ecoforestry Society Ph. 250.935.6888 |
Community Forestry in BCBC’s economic and environmental future will be determined by who controls the landbase. Ninety-six per cent of the province is publicly owned, yet a small handful of logging companies have been given logging licenses (tenures) that result in a virtual monopoly on British Columbia’s forests. The grass-root community forestry movement is aimed at shifting this balance of power. Three essential features define a community forest: the community makes the management decisions; the community benefits; and, the forest is managed for multiple values. In its most basic form, community forestry is local people making local decisions over local lands for the long-term benefit of local people.“Rural communities in British Columbia are seeking solutions for
sustainable community economic development, and many see community forestry
as a very promising strategy. Since the late 1990s, over 100 communities
have expressed interest in establishing community forests, but until very
recently they have worked in relative isolation. In 2003, the British
Columbia government announced its intention to expand community forestry
in the province. As part of its plan to revitalize the forest economy,
the government [committed to] …double the timber allocated to community-based
forest tenures such as Woodlot Licences and Community Forest Agreements.” BC Community Forest AssociationThe BCCFA is a network of rural community-based organizations that either manage community forests or that are striving to establish community forests. Formed in 2002, the BCCFA is a non-profit society whose mission is to promote and support the practice and expansion of sustainable community forest management in British Columbia. CES was a founding member and is currently on the BCCFA board executive. The BCCFA vision is a network of diverse community forest initiatives, where local people practice ecologically responsible forest management in perpetuity, fostering and supporting healthy and vibrant rural communities and economies. To learn more about the BCCFA, visit them at www.bccfa.ca WHAT IS COMMUNITY FORESTRY?(Excerpt from the Community Forest Guidebook) The definitions of community forestry are as numerous and varied as the communities trying to implement them. Community forestry involves the three pillars of sustainable development: social, ecological, and economic sustainability. At its core, community forestry is about local control over and enjoyment of the benefits offered by local forest resources. These benefits are both monetary and non-monetary. On the monetary side, benefits include local employment and economic development. Non-monetary benefits are derived from the many values associated with forests, including ecological (such as the protection of drinking water), cultural, spiritual, medicinal, recreational, and aesthetic values. The legal arrangements that permit the conduct of community forestry are varied. For example, community forests can exist where a municipality owns forest land, or where land is managed through a covenant. In British Columbia, however, community forests are most often established when the government grants forest management rights to a community as a tenure arrangement, or timber licence. Examples include: community forest agreements, forest licences, and tree farm licences. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF COMMUNITY FORESTRY?Some of the numerous benefits of community forestry include:
MANAGEMENT CONTROL ACROSS CANADACanada is unique among forest nations in that 94% of its forests are publicly owned, with 71% of the forests under provincial jurisdiction and 23% under federal jurisdiction. Only 6% of Canada's forests are private land, dispersed among an estimated 425,000 private landowners, mostly small woodlot owners. . . most forest tenures are between forest companies and provincial governments and grant access to Crown timber for varying periods, typically ranging from 5 to 25 years. Of Canada's 417.6 million hectares of forest, nearly half, or 235 million hectares, is considered commercial forests; that is, capable of producing merchantable timber in a reasonable period of time. Approximately 50%, or 119 million hectares of this area is managed primarily for timber production through Crown forest tenures. (Canadian Forest Service, 1998). . .The main purpose of Crown forest tenures has been to facilitate the logging of Canada's extensive areas of primary forest. . .Canada's forest tenures were not designed to provide opportunities for local community control of forests. Most Crown forest tenures were initially granted to large forest corporations in exchange for commitments from these companies to invest in Canada and develop a forest industry infrastructure. As a result of the existing tenure structure, and economic forces operating in the forest industry, the trend in recent decades has been towards increased concentration of forest tenures among a few, large forest companies, largely to the exclusion of community-based forestry and other smaller-scale forest tenures. As a result, there are few examples of community forests in Canada, despite Canada's extensive forests and long history of forest management. Source: International Network of Forests and Communities OTHER COMMUNITY FOREST LINKSDogwood Initiative’s first major publication is the Connecting Lands and People: Community Forests in British Columbia. |
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