From government to governance in forest planning? Lessons from the case of the British Columbia Great Bear Rainforest initiative ☆ Michael Howlett a , Jeremy Rayner b, ⁎, Chris Tollefson c a Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby BC, Canada V5A 1S6 b Department of Political Science, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada S4S 0A2 c Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, PO Box 2400, STN CSC, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada V8W 3H7 abstract article info Keywords: Governance Law and regulation British Columbia Land use planning Institutionalization Much has been written about a supposed shift ‘from government to governance’ in many policy areas, including forest policy. However, the idea remains very much at the level of hypothesis as few empirical studies have confirmed the transition. Part of the problem is the multi-dimensional character of governance itself, which includes traditional ‘government’ as one of many possible governance modes. By providing a three dimensional picture of these potential governance modes, including overlapping institutional, political and regulatory dimensions, this article analyses the complex and incomplete character of moves towards any new governance mode in a high-profile land use planning exercise in British Columbia, that of the “Great Bear Rainforest” protected area strategy on the province's mid-coast region in 2006. Little evidence of such a shift is uncovered, despite much rhetoric to the contrary. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Throughout much of the 1990s, forest policy discourse in British Columbia, and indeed across Canada, was dominated by a noisy clash between the defenders of traditional “command and control” regulation and proponents of alternative approaches more reliant on voluntary, community and market instruments such as certification and community-run forests to secure the goals of sustainable forest management (Tollefson, 1998; Cashore et al., 2001). In previous eras, the clash of ideas about policy direction occurred very much within the mode of traditional hierarchical governance structures — and featured mainly disputes over the extent of government control over various aspects of forest production (Tollefson, 1998). More recent years, however, have been characterized by an emerging clash between ‘government’ and ‘governance’ in which alternative modes of governance to traditional top–down hierarchical government control through laws and regulations have been mooted and, in some cases, actually implemented. The results of this most recent policy struggle remain inscrutable: to date, neither side had achieved a knock-down victory. The provincial forest sector remains beset by diverse challenges — both familiar (modernization, job loss, global competition, and boom and bust conditions linked to the rise and fall of the U.S. housing market) and more novel (mountain pine beetle epidemic, and uncertainty surrounding the implications of Aboriginal rights and title) and while BC forest policy has evolved in a variety of new and unfamiliar directions, the governance mode remains unclear. Some of the policy changes that have been implemented are directly linked to changes in forest policy discourses and the rise of new community-based actors to challenge existing professional experts employed by industry and government. Significant new actors have emerged to contest what has traditionally been a closed forest policy community, dominated by the state and its corporate licensees with a shared discourse of professional forest management for timber production (Wilson, 1998). Prominent among these new actors were First Nations, buoyed by a series of legal victories affirming their aboriginal rights and title over public or Crown forest in BC (Howlett, 2001). Recent years have also seen the emergence of a broad constellation of new forest policy players including those involved in forest certification programs and members of a growing scientific community concerned with issues such as global warming and the role of forests in climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies (Kamieniecki, 2000; Cashore et al., 2003). The incorporation of these new actors was both a cause and a consequence of a more widespread acceptance of new values and approaches in forest policy discourse, as the sustainable forest management (SFM) planning paradigm, long dominant within international negotiations on resources and the environment (Lieffer- ink, 2006), was increasingly integrated into existing provincial forest policy regimes. This integration process occurred through a variety of vehicles — including the National Forest Strategy (NFS) and through Forest Policy and Economics 11 (2009) 383–391 ☆ The authors acknowledge the research support from the Sustainable Forest Management Network of Centres of Excellence, and the research assistance from Airi Schroff and Tim Thielmann. ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 306 585 5679; fax: +1 306 585 4815. E-mail addresses: howlett@sfu.ca (M. Howlett), jeremy.rayner@uregina.ca (J. Rayner), ctollef@uvic.ca (C. Tollefson). 1389-9341/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.forpol.2009.01.003 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Forest Policy and Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/forpol