Part 2 Land To The Tiller,Forests To The Communities

By Peter Ewart & Dawn Hemingway

By Peter Ewart & Dawn Hemingway

This is the second article of a three  part series .  The first article can be accessed at: “Land to the tiller, forests to the communities – Part 1.”

A few hundred years ago, during the Middle Ages, society looked very different from today, at least on the surface.  Indeed, it was dominated by a tiny aristocracy who had absolute power over the land and over all the affairs of the community.  Everything in feudal society revolved around these princes and barons, whose gloved hands were rarely, if ever, soiled with  earth or dampened with sweat.

This was despite the fact that it was the lowly serfs and peasants who were the productive forces in the society and who actually tilled, cultivated and harvested the land.  Any initiatives outside of the parameters of the rigid class system were stifled. Ultimately, this was an untenable situation, and the serfs and peasants revolted, their rallying cry often being “land to the tiller.”

But in some ways, things aren’t that much different today.  The CEOs of the big corporations are like feudal lords.  In fact, in the realm of forestry, they are often referred to as “timber barons” because their companies control vast tracts of forested land in the province. 

The prevailing ideology for a long time has been that the interests of these  corporations, many of which are multinationals, should be at the center of forestry production in BC and Canada. In fact, the argument is made that these large companies must be at the center in order that workers have jobs and communities flourish.

The rest of the forest industry, whether it be workers, communities, contractors, suppliers, value-added manufacturers, or small and medium forest companies, revolves around the aims and interests of these big companies.

In a sense, because of government policy, the rest of the forest industry is reduced to the status of bystanders.  To put it another way, these big companies are the sun and everyone else is a satellite.  This relationship is reflected in practically every aspect of forest policy, whether it be access to timber, timber licensing, forestry de-regulation, rules governing corporate concentration, and so on.

Control is not here in Prince George, Mackenzie, Fort St. James or other forestry communities.  Rather it rests in government offices in Victoria and corporate boardrooms in New York and other places.  It is a highly centralized system that allows big companies maximum opportunity to influence the forest policies of big government far away from local areas and regions.

Today, if a mill shuts down, the workers, contractors, communities and municipalities are left powerless.  Like the serfs and peasants of feudal times, initiative is not in their hands.  The mills sit idle, rusting behind padlocked gates.  The trees in the forest stand untouched and unharvested, swaying in the wind.  And a community’s livelihood trickles away bit by bit like sand in an hourglass.  It is such a stifling of creativity and energy, of entrepreneurial spirit, of individual and community potential.  And it is certainly not ensuring the livelihood of workers, families and communities.

So why not change this situation, especially now when the current forestry system is in such disarray?  Why not shift to a community-based and community-centred forest industry, where it is the community around which everything revolves?  Why not have the forests controlled by the people and communities that do forestry rather than by far away bureaucrats and financiers?

The seeds for such a shift have already been planted.  Community forests, which are forests managed by local governments and local organizations for the good of the community, have been in existence in BC since the late 1940s.  In more recent years, both the NDP and Liberal governments, to their credit, have put policies in place that have allowed community forests to expand significantly.

But community forests still remain only a small part of the timber allocation in the province, between 600,000 to 700,000 hectares out of a productive forest base of about 29 million hectares.  Yet the results so far have been impressive, with community forests across the province, both native and non-native, taking the initiative in a wide variety of ways, depending on local circumstances.

For example, when mills close down, the experience has been that some community forests develop silviculture and land management programs which give unemployed workers the opportunity to build back up their Employment Insurance benefits.  Others grant logging rights so as to finance community projects of various kinds.  Still others use their forests to encourage diversified wood manufacturing and processing, or to diversify into other industries like recreation and tourism. 

It is clear. At the time of a severe downturn, we need the unleashing of creativity, not the stifling of it by outmoded forest management and tenure practices.

The issue before our generation today is to substantially expand community forests to the point that control of the forests in the province shifts to the forestry-based communities.  The provincial government regularly hands out huge timber licenses to big companies whose CEOs and shareholders often don’t even live in British Columbia.  Why not then, communities?

The provincial government, of course, would still have overall responsibility for forest policy and environmental regulations.  But communities like Mackenzie, Fort St. James, Prince George, Quesnel, Princeton, Port Alberni and Campbell River would work out what should be done with their forests and how to best manage them.

This would unleash the energy and initiative of the communities, in terms of diversifying and getting the most value out of the forest resource.  As it stands now, if the big companies close down operations in a community practically everything and everyone is put in a position of paralysis.  All the invaluable knowledge and experience, built up over many years, of planting, growing, harvesting and processing the forest resource is wasted, is put on indefinite “hold,” until, or if, the company decides to restart its operations.

Community forests are one way to get around this problem. 

In Part 3 of this series, we will be discussing how the expansion of community forests, which has broad support in the province, can be used to alleviate regional disparity and strengthen the municipal level of government in rural areas.

Peter Ewart is a writer and instructor, and Dawn Hemingway is a writer and professor.  Both are based in Prince George, British Columbia, and can be reached at hemingwa@unbc.ca

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