Forestry Advance Access originally published online on June 11, 2007
Forestry 2007 80(3):279-291; doi:10.1093/forestry/cpm014
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Socio-economic status of boreal communities in Canada
1 Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, 5320 – 122 Street NW, Edmonton, Alberta T6H 3S5, Canada
2 Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
* Corresponding author. E-mail: mpatriqu{at}nrcan.gc.ca
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Summary |
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 Top Summary IntroductionResearch questions and methodsResultsDiscussion and conclusionsConflict of Interest StatementAcknowledgementsReferences |
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The boreal forest region contains nearly 20 per cent of the world's forest resources. Canada contains
30 per cent of the world's boreal forest and the future of Canada's boreal region has been the subject of spirited debate, with some advocating more extensive and intensive harvest, while others argue for increased protection. Since the boreal region lags behind Canada as a whole on most indicators of socio-economic status, arguments for expanded harvest and for increased protection invoke the need to sustain human communities. To provide context for these discussions, we use Census of Canada data to examine the relationship between forest dependence and socio-economic status in the boreal region, and whether this relationship has changed over time. Controlling for other forms of economic development and place-specific characteristics, we find mixed results of forest dependence on socio-economic status. The forest industry plays a relatively small role in direct employment and labour income. Forest dependence is associated with increased income (especially in the lumber and pulp sectors), but relatively unstable employment. Examining the trend data, the forest industry appeared to have the greatest positive impact on socio-economic status in 1996, with a subsequent decline in 2001. Results signal a need for multi-faceted policy development associated with intensive management zones for industrial expansion and additional protected areas to support, in part, the maintenance of traditional activities such as trapping and fishing. |
Introduction |
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TopSummaryIntroductionResearch questions and methodsResultsDiscussion and conclusionsConflict of Interest StatementAcknowledgementsReferences |
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This paper examines the contribution of forestry and other resource sectors to socio-economic conditions in communities within the boreal region of Canada. Regional development policy in Canada has historically focused on regions facing similar economic pressures (O’Neill, 1994
). (Major policy events over the past 50 years include the establishment of the Atlantic Development Board in 1962 and the Department of Regional Economic Expansion in 1969 (O’Neill, 1994.) Although these programmes no longer exist or have evolved into new regional development agencies, they were intended to foster economic developmentamong groups of provinces (i.e. politicized regions) in areas experiencing prolonged decline or stagnation associated with rural, resource-based economies (O’Neill, 1994)). However, the recent politicization of the boreal region has precipitated a departure from strict consideration of political jurisdictions (i.e. provincial or territorial issues) to a broader interest in ecological jurisdictions. Driven largely by national and international environmental interests such as the Canadian Boreal Initiative (2006), environmental and production forestry discourses associated with the boreal forest in Canada have increased (Baldwin, 2003). However, the availability of scientific data specific to the boreal region remains scant with recent reports using rough approximations for industrial activity (Lee, 2004; CFS, 2005) and analysts calling for boreal data than can aid in the development of boreal-specific forest policy (Bogdanski, 2005).
We intend to contribute to this discussion with data from the Census of Canada for the periods of 1991, 1996 and 2001, by exploring the relationship between forest dependence and socio-economic status in the boreal region. We use longitudinal data from the three census periods to investigate the socio-economic status (the term socio-economic status is used throughout this article and we recognize that a broader definition of community well-being would include consideration for a suite of human and social variables (Kusel, 1996). This analysis is restricted to a narrow definition of well-being or socio-economic status as reflected by census variables) of Canadian boreal communities and the changing relationship between status in boreal communities and dependence on forestry and other natural resource sectors. Finally, several implications of these trends are discussed with respect to current policy debates and the future of boreal communities.
Boreal biophysical context
Globally, the boreal forest is a circumpolar vegetation belt, dominated by coniferous trees, of 920 million ha representing 20 per cent of all forests and 73 per cent of all coniferous forests (Kuusela, 1992). The boreal forests of the world are located in northern latitudes and extend across a number of nations including Russia, Canada, the United States of America (Alaska) and the Nordic countries of Finland, Norway and Sweden (Kuusela, 1992). Boreal forests are predominantly located in Russia (70 per cent) with Canada a distant second place (29 per cent) and the remainder in Alaska and the Nordic countries (Kuusela, 1992). Among Canadian forest types, the boreal region encompasses 79 per cent of the total forested area and 68 per cent of the productive timber forest lands (Bogdanski, 2005). The Canadian Forest Service (CFS, 2005) defined the boreal region in the State of Canada's Forests report for 2004–2005 according to ecozones that include Taiga Cordillera, Taiga Plains, Taiga Shield, Hudson Plains, Boreal Cordillera, Boreal Plains, Boreal Shield and the Atlantic Maritime. This classification was used in this study to select our boreal study communities.
Boreal socio-political context
The boreal forest represents the largest terrestrial biome on the planet, and provides habitat to a diverse range of plant and animal species including many human communities (Holmes, 2003). Burton et al. (2003) suggest that until recently, human use of the world's boreal forests has been comparatively modest. In general, forest management has evolved from subsistence use by Aboriginal communities to a period of unregulated exploitation followed by subsequent periods of administrative regulation, sustained yield or scientific forestry and finally the modern era of ‘social forestry’ that includes sustainable forest management and ecosystem-based management (Burton et al., 2003, p.11). A key feature of this evolution within Canada is that over 90 per cent of forest lands are under public ownership and harvest and management of timber is conducted under various forms of private tenure on public land. Therefore, public pressure contributes to the evolving meaning and management of the boreal forest (Burton et al., 2003; CFS, 2005). Since boreal forest management falls to provincial and territorial land management agencies, these managers are working within a paradigm that attempts to manage multiple land uses within the context of environmentally sustainable forestry. But the management of public land also extends to a variety of other industrial uses including fishing and trapping, recreation, mining and petroleum extraction (Burton et al., 2003).
As an example of these expanding values within the boreal landscape, Baldwin (2003) contends that the boreal forest is not just a static space of resource extraction to support human communities, but rather the politicization of the boreal is an expression of knowledge and power that increasingly represents it as a space of community and land stewardship, climate regulation and conservation of biological diversity. The dynamic construction and evolving multiplicity of meanings of the boreal forest is an example of the constant challenges within management agencies to achieve the ‘right disposition of things’ (Baldwin, 2003).
One of the current policy debates regarding the boreal region in Canada focuses on protected areas. According to some, there is an opportunity to establish large and contiguous protected areas across the boreal landscape as a hedge against expanding industrial development in the region and to promote the status of local communities by establishing a network of large interconnected protected areas, characterized by leading-edge sustainable development practices in remaining areas (Canadian Boreal Initiative, 2003). In contrast, government and industry-oriented groups such as the Canadian Forest Innovation Council (CCFM, 2003) have developed a strong coalition of interests that focus on strengthening the forest sector through industry competitiveness, profitability, environmental quality and community stability. Industry competitiveness issues have been particularly acute in recent years with numerous mill closures and consolidations taking place across the country (CFS, 2006). These competitiveness issues are related to changes in global supply and demand, an unfavourable export market currency exchange rate and competition from lower cost producers and increased plantation forestry outside Canada (CFS, 2006). The competitiveness of the boreal forest sector is further influenced by a cold northern climate, resulting in high-quality timber and relatively slow growth rates, and spatial separation from large urban population centres (Burton et al., 2003).
According to industry advocates, hundreds of communities across the boreal region depend on the forest industry for their livelihood, and continued calls for further forest protection by groups such as the Canadian Boreal Initiative will serve to destabilize the investment climate and further threaten the economic stability of many boreal communities. Given this economic and political climate, research on the economic contributions of the forest sector and other resource sectors to boreal communities may provide insights into the extent to which communities could be affected by major policy changes, including the increased protection of forest landscapes as proposed by the Canadian Boreal Initiative (2003) or movements towards enhanced competitiveness through low-cost plantation forestry (Sedjo, 2001).
Resource dependence and socio-economic status
A rich history of research exists in the US and Canada that explores the status of resource dependent communities (e.g. Kaufman and Kaufman, 1946; Bliss et al., 1992; Howze et al., 1993; Cook, 1995). Teitelbaum et al. (2003) provide a synthesis of the applied sociology in the US and trace the evolution of forest community sustainability in Canada. In general, these authors document the problems faced by forest-dependent communities (e.g. instability and high rates of poverty and unemployment). For example, Bliss et al. (1992), and later Cook (1995), found that in the US, forest dependence is generally associated with higher rates of poverty. These findings are hardly universal: similar analysis in Canada suggests positive socio-economic returns for certain industries of the forest sector and regions of the country (Parkins et al., 2003; Stedman et al., 2005). A recent article by Leake et al. (2006) found that forest dependence in Canadian communities was positively and significantly related to unemployment rates and to the incidence of poverty for people in private households over the period of 1986 to 1996.
Multiple theories have been offered as potential explanations for the negative empirical relationships found between resource dependence and socio-economic status. These theories include underinvestment in human skills, power structures dominated by large scale corporate interests, moral exclusion through social constructs of nature, mobility and availability of resources fixed to a land base, the linkage of extraction activities and subsequent processing and core-periphery industrial structure (Humphrey et al., 1993). Stedman et al. (2004) offer a review of these theories and suggest that core-periphery theory has emerged as one of the leading explanations for the ‘typically’ negative relationship between resource dependence and indicators of status. In previous research, core industries were linked to jobs with high pay and benefits in areas of mill work and lumber activity where as periphery industries were linked to lower paying jobs and lower benefits in the logging and forest service activities (Averitt, 1968; Overdevest and Green, 1995).
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Research questions and methods |
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TopSummaryIntroductionResearch questions and methodsResultsDiscussion and conclusionsConflict of Interest StatementAcknowledgementsReferences |
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We explore the relationship between resource dependence (most notably, forest dependence) and socio-economic status in the boreal region of Canada, as well as how this relationship may have changed over time. Data used in this analysis come from the Census of Canada and are linked in two files. The first file, which we use to compile total real labour income (i.e. adjusted for inflation through the use of constant 2001 dollars) and total employment by sector for all of Canada and for the boreal region, consists of employment and income data from customized census data from 1991, 1996 and 2001. Data are reported by census sub-division (CSD) (in Canada, CSDs consist of fine level geographies that correspond well with municipal boundaries and rural municipal districts and generally provide a finer level of geographic detail compared with other jurisdictions such as the US (Statistics Canada, 2002
)) and are summed across all the CSDs reported for each year that had 25 per cent or greater spatial coverage within the boreal region as previously defined.
In the second file, however, data reported for every CSD in Canada have been filtered to include a comparable subset of rural (i.e. non-census metropolitan) CSDs across the three time periods. The dataset was developed and maintained by the New Rural Economy Project at Concordia University (NRE, 2006) and provides a consistent platform that accounts for CSD boundary and code changes across the observation periods. The dataset was used to provide a snapshot of the social and economic status of boreal communities compared with the rest of Canada, and to conduct a longitudinal analysis of the relationship between sector dependence and socio-economic status over time in the boreal region. Longitudinal analysis involved a method called repeated cross-sectional design (Menard, 2002). In the repeated cross-sectional design, data for each period are a separate cross-section, but comparisons between and among cases are possible because the cases are comparable from one period to another. The longitudinal analysis was performed using SPSS version 13.0 (SPSS, 2003).
Indicators of status used in the literature include median family income, poverty rates, unemployment, educational attainment levels and migration or population fluctuation rates. As a point of comparison with previous studies in Canada (Stedman et al., 2004; Parkins et al., 2006), median family income (reported in Canadian dollars) and the unemployment rate were selected as two alternative indicators of socio-economic status and the respective dependent variables for the individual longitudinal regressions.
Consistent with broad comparative studies in the US and Canada, sector dependence is measured as the proportion of total income originating from a particular sector. We focus on forestry but also examine the contributions of agriculture, fishing and trapping, mining and energy. The forest sector is disaggregated into four main industries based on previous investigations of core-periphery relationships in the forest sector: lumber, pulp, logging and forestry services. Agriculture includes primary and secondary agricultural production, incidental services and food distribution. Fishing and trapping includes primary and secondary fishing and trapping. Mining consists of primary metal and non-metal mining, mining services and wholesale metal and non-metal products. Energy includes crude and refined petroleum and natural gas, transport distribution systems, incidental services and wholesale products.
Other sectors included in the analysis are hospitality services, public service (health, education, social services and utilities) and government transfers. Control variables used in the analysis include the CSD population, metropolitan influence zones (a measure of economic influence of urbanized areas), the per cent of the population aged 0–14, the per cent of the population with less than a grade nine educational attainment level (i.e. less than completion of middle school or junior high school) and communities identified as Aboriginal populations.
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Results |
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TopSummaryIntroductionResearch questions and methodsResultsDiscussion and conclusionsConflict of Interest StatementAcknowledgementsReferences |
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Total income and employment by sector from 1991 to 2001
There were 4806 CSDs identified for 2001, 5243 for 1996 and 4496 for 1991 for which income and employment data were available. The boreal region represents a subset of 1241 CSDs in 2001, 1289 in 1996 and 1015 in 1991. Labour income accounts for a significant portion (i.e. approximately half) of gross domestic product (GDP) in Canada, and in the absence of reliable GDP estimates by ecozone, labour income provides a reference point for the wealth derived through economic activity. (Labour income consistently represented over 50 per cent of the value of GDP per year in Canada over the period of 1961–2002.) Table 1 reports the total real labour income earned by sector in the boreal region and overall Canada for the period of 1991–2001.
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Despite the vast size of the boreal region, it represented a small and declining portion of total real labour income in Canada: 8.6 per cent in 1991, 7.5 per cent in 1996 and 6.5 per cent in 2001 (Table 1). In general, the boreal region experienced real labour income growth from 1991 to 2001 in most sectors except pulp, forestry services, fishing and trapping, hospitality and government transfers. Similarly, pulp, forestry services, hospitality and government transfers declined in Canada overall between 1991 and 2001. Lumber, fishing and trapping, energy, hospitality, public and composite sectors were the only sectors that experienced an increase from 1996 to 2001 in the boreal region. The overall forest sector in the boreal represented 4.7–6 per cent of total labour income in the boreal region and experienced a decline from 1996 to 2001 resulting from declines in pulp, logging and forestry services. The lumber industry experienced the only growth among the forest sector industries from 1996 to 2001 in the boreal region.
Table 2 reports the total employment by sector in the boreal region and all of Canada for the period 1991–2001. The general trend experienced for labour income is also apparent for employment. For example, the boreal region accounted for 9.8 per cent of total employment in Canada in 1991 and this declined to 8.4 per cent in 1996 and further declined to 7.6 per cent in 2001. The total employment statistics provide a somewhat sharper contrast in the forest sector decline compared with income. For example, calculated from Table 2, forest sector employment accounted for only 3.4 to 3.8 per cent of total employment in the boreal region (depending on the specific sector) and the decline in employment from 1996 to 2001 was 11.7 per cent compared with a 3.6 per cent decline in real labour income. Therefore, employment in the forest sector appears to be declining more rapidly than is labour income.
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Longitudinal analysis – descriptive statistics
In total, a subset of 1904 CSDs were comparable over the period 1991–2001 with 651 rural CSDs identified as boreal and 1253 rural CSDs identified for the rest of Canada. The number of CSDs with a proportional total income dependence greater than or equal to 20 per cent in a given sector is reported in Table 3. In general, highly forest-dependent communities comprise less than 10 per cent of all the CSDs within the comparable subset, but increased in prevalence between 1991 and 2001 for both the boreal region and for Canada as a whole. Most of this increase was experienced in the lumber and logging sectors.
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Socio-economic status in the boreal region, 1991–2001
An examination of selected variables indicates that communities in the boreal region are consistently and significantly worse off on average than communities in the rest of Canada (Table 4). For example, in 2001 the average median family income across the boreal region was $35 832, significantly lower than the mean median family income across the communities in the rest of Canada ($41 246). In each year of observation, boreal communities exhibit significantly higher poverty rates, unemployment rates, high percentage of the population aged 0–14 and low educational attainment level (Table 4). The only exceptions where no statistical differences were found between the boreal region and the rest of Canada were in the median family income in 1991 and the poverty rate in 1996.
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The income gap between the boreal region and the rest of Canada has been growing over time. Nominal median family income consistently increased from 1991 to 2001 in both the boreal region and the rest of Canada, but the disparity grew from an 8 per cent premium in the rest of Canada in 1991 to 13 per cent in 1996 and then 15 per cent in 2001. Despite the trend in median family income, the mean poverty rate and unemployment reached their highest point among the three observation periods in 2001 in both the boreal region and the rest of Canada. Populations in both regions also aged over the study period as the mean per cent of the population aged 0–14 decreased slightly from 1991 to 2001. Along with the decrease in the size of the youngest population cohort, educational attainment levels improved over the study period for the population 15 years and older. However, overall, the boreal region of Canada lags behind the nation as a whole on most indicators of status, and these differences grew between 1991 and 2001.
Longitudinal analysis – regression
The relationship between sector dependence and the two indicators of socio-economic status (i.e. median family income and unemployment rate) was examined using a longitudinal multivariate regression analysis constructed as a repeated cross-sectional design. The linear regression models reported in Tables 5 and 6 provide some insights into the changes in the contribution of the various sectors to socio-economic status over the three census periods in the boreal region and the rest of Canada. The regression results include (1) the effect of forest industry dependence on status, (2) the effect of other resource sectors on status and (3) the effects of other sector dependence and controls on status.
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Forest sector dependence and socio-economic status
Among the industries of the forest sector in the boreal region, lumber dependence and pulp dependence both had significant and positive effects on median household income in all three observation periods (Table 5). Pulp dependence significantly increased median family income for each observation period; the greatest contribution occurred in 1996 with a $773 increase in median family income for every 1 per cent increase in pulp dependence. Lumber dependence also fostered income for each of the observation periods, with the largest effect also occurring in 1996. In other words, these sectors both appear to have core-like income characteristics in the boreal region, while logging and forest services exhibited periphery characteristics, or marginal effects on household income.
When the unemployment rate is used as the indicator of socio-economic status, we see different results. Lumber dependence had a significant negative relationship with unemployment in 1996 and 2001 (Table 6). In other words, for every 1 per cent increase in lumber dependence in the boreal region, there was a 0.30 per cent decrease in the unemployment rate in 1996 and a 0.38 per cent decrease in the unemployment rate in 2001. In contrast, the relationship between pulp dependence and unemployment was only significant in 1991. Finally, unlike the positive relationship between logging dependence and income, where an increase in logging dependence corresponds with modest increases in income, unemployment appears to increase with logging dependence.
Other resource sector dependence and socio-economic status
We also examined the net contributions of other natural resource sectors to socio-economic status. Dependence on agriculture, fishing, mining and energy significantly increased median family income in the boreal region in both 1996 and 2001 (Table 5). Energy dependence had the largest positive influence on median family income followed by mining, agriculture and fishing and trapping. For every 1 per cent increase in energy dependence in 1996, median family income in the boreal region increased by $731 – a comparable effect to pulp dependence ($773). However, these results were more modest, or absent altogether, in 1991.
The results change somewhat when the unemployment rate is examined. Agriculture, mining and energy dependence all have a negative relationship with unemployment (i.e. as dependence increases, unemployment decrease and vice versa) in each period, with the exception that the relationship with unemployment is not significant between mining dependence and energy dependence in 1996 (Table 6). While agriculture dependence has a relatively small relationship with median family income (i.e. compared with energy, mining and lumber), it places the strongest downward pressure on unemployment among all the resource sectors.
Other sector effects and controls
Other characteristics of place also affect status. In the boreal region, dependence on the hospitality industry had a positive effect on median family income, but this relationship was only significant in 1996 (Table 5). A similar relationship existed for public sector dependence starting in 1996 through 2001. The relationship between dependence on government transfers and median family income was significant, but varied over the 3 years. The relationship was negative in 1991 and 2001, but positive in 1996. Alternatively, hospitality dependence did not have a significant negative relationship with unemployment, while public sector dependence had a significant negative relationship in 2001 (Table 6). Government transfer dependence was significantly and positively associated with unemployment in 1996.
Population size was a significant control variable in the regressions for the boreal region for both dependent variables. Population size was positively related to median family income in the boreal in 1991 and 1996, and negatively related to the unemployment rate in the boreal region in 2001. Because the metropolitan influence zone had little effect on income and unemployment in the boreal region, it appears that the distance a community is located from a census metropolitan area in the boreal region had little influence on socio-economic status. In contrast, the further a community is located from a census metropolitan area in the rest of Canada, the lower the median family income in the community.
The size of the population 14 years of age and younger had a negative effect on median family income in the boreal region in 2001, but educational attainment had a far greater influence. Low educational attainment reduces median family income and increases unemployment across all observation periods with the exception of unemployment in 1996. High populations of Aboriginal people also reduce median family income across all observation periods, but much more modestly increase unemployment in the boreal region.
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Discussion and conclusions |
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TopSummaryIntroductionResearch questions and methodsResultsDiscussion and conclusionsConflict of Interest StatementAcknowledgementsReferences |
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Several key conclusions can be derived from these results. First, even within the boreal region, labour income from the forest sector is relatively small at
$ 2.4 billion compared with total labour income of more than $40 billion in 2001. Employment in the forest sector is also relatively small, accounting for 3.5 per cent of total direct employment in the boreal region. While labour income increased in the forest sector over this 10-year period, employment declined, contrasting sharply with employment in the energy sector which doubled over the same period from 1991 to 2001. Second, socio-economic status in boreal communities is lower than in non-boreal rural Canadian communities, and these differences appear to be increasing rather than decreasing. Although general education levels have improved, unemployment and poverty rates are consistently high and family incomes continue to slip behind those found in communities outside of the boreal region. This should be a cause for grave concern among those concerned about the sustainability of human communities in the boreal region. Third, although forestry and other resource sectors make a consistently positive contribution to family income in boreal communities (lumber, pulp, mining and energy in particular), this relationship is more uneven when it comes to employment.
Consistent with other research on the relationship between resource dependence and socio-economic status, a great deal of variation in status is accounted for by the particulars of place and the nature of industry (Stedman et al., 2004). This includes variation between industries such as logging vs lumber dependence. Moreover, forest sector contributions to status were found to be marginal within Aboriginal communities (Parkins et al., 2006) and within forest-based communities in the province of New Brunswick, Canada (Parkins et al., 2003). Data from the boreal region of Canada paint a different picture again with respect to the socio-economic drivers within resource-based communities, and these individual assessments can be pulled together for a more comprehensive picture of socio-economic conditions in resource-based communities across Canada.
Given the results of this study, there are several implications for policy development within the boreal region. Industry-oriented groups such as the Canadian Forest Innovation Council (CCFM, 2003), identify competitiveness and profitability as key factors for the industry to continue making positive contributions to forest-based communities. Since the region is lagging behind the rest of rural Canada with respect to a range of key socio-economic variables, policies in support of enhanced commercial development and an eco-regional approach to economic development (similar to earlier versions of agencies such as the Atlantic Development Board) may be warranted. However, competitiveness issues such as high transportation costs in remote and geographically dispersed locales, and the challenges of slower growing fibre in northern latitudes appear to be even more acute within the boreal regions of Canada. Therefore, future development of traditional forest industries may be somewhat limited.
Alternatively, the Canadian Boreal Initiative (2006) is calling for enhanced protection of about half of the country's boreal region. According to critics of this initiative, protection of this magnitude is thought to have damaging consequences for the economic outlook of communities within the protected areas region. Given the relatively small contribution of forestry to income and employment in the region, however, enhanced forest protection may have little economic impact on communities in the region. In fact, depending on the levels of protection and allowances for traditional activities such as fishing and trapping, the income base of boreal communities may remain relatively unaffected by changes to resource-based industrial activities. Employment in fishing and trapping sectors comprised about half of the employment in the forest sector in 2001, and these sectors may be enhanced by certain types of protection policies. One general exception to this argument involves the strong growth observed in energy industry employment over the period 1991–2001, which is likely to be adversely affected by a strong protected areas policy.
A third policy option has been proposed by groups such as the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry (1999) who recommend a triad approach to forest landscape management. Under this scenario, 20 per cent of the landscape is intensively managed through some form of plantation management (Sedjo, 2001), 20 per cent is protected but with allowances for traditional activities and the remaining landscape is less intensively managed over broad areas. Under this policy framework, there may be opportunities to address competitiveness challenges through low-cost plantation forests around selected mill sites. This approach may also facilitate forest protection for a range of values such as habitat conservation and ecological services, along with the enhancement of a wider variety of traditional and/or low impact forest-based activities such as fishing, trapping and recreation. This type of policy may be more favourable for no other reason than it tends to support a more diversified set of economic activities on the forest landscape and contribute to the social and economic diversity that is already a part of many boreal communities. The boreal region has international socio-political importance, and local, regional and global ecological relevance. Researchers will continue to explore the trends in boreal communities with a keen eye to the long-term resilience of these locales in the context of changing economic circumstances, changing societal values, expanding political interest, shifting domestic government priorities and emerging issues such as climate change.
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Conflict of Interest Statement |
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TopSummaryIntroductionResearch questions and methodsResultsDiscussion and conclusionsConflict of Interest StatementAcknowledgementsReferences |
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None declared.
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Acknowledgements |
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TopSummaryIntroductionResearch questions and methodsResultsDiscussion and conclusionsConflict of Interest StatementAcknowledgementsReferences |
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The authors acknowledge Bill Reimer and Mike Burns (Concordia University), Bill White (Canadian Forest Service), Tom Beckley (University of New Brunswick) and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions and assistance. Brent Joss (Canadian Forest Service) provided GIS assistance in developing the boreal database. We also thank the Rural Secretariat, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, for their financial support.
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Received 22 December 2006.
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