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How organized resistance to new fossil fuel infrastructure became a political force and how this might affect the transition to renewable energy. Organized resistance to new fossil fuel infrastructure, particularly conflicts over pipelines, has become a formidable political force in North America. In this book, George Hoberg examines whether such place-based environmental movements are effective ways of promoting climate action, if they might inadvertently feed resistance to the development of renewable energy infrastructure, and what other, more innovative processes of decision-making would encourage the acceptance of clean energy systems. Focusing on a series of conflicts over new oil sands pipelines, Hoberg investigates activists' strategy of blocking fossil fuel infrastructure, often in alliance with Indigenous groups, and examines the political and environmental outcomes of these actions. After discussing the oil sands policy regime and the relevant political institutions in Canada and the United States, Hoberg analyzes in detail four anti-pipeline campaigns, examining the controversies over the Keystone XL, the most well-known of these movements and the first one to use infrastructure resistance as a core strategy; the Northern Gateway pipeline; the Trans Mountain pipeline; and the Energy East pipeline. He then considers the “resistance dilemma”: the potential of place-based activism to threaten the much-needed transition to renewable energy. He examines several episodes of resistance to clean energy infrastructure in eastern Canada and the United States. Finally, Hoberg describes some innovative processes of energy decision-making, including strategic environment assessment, and cumulative impact assessment, looking at cases in British Columbia and Lower Alberta.

Recognizing the potential interactions and synergies between adaptation and mitigation in land-use policies in general and forest policies in particular, research on climate change policy has increasingly focused on integrating both objectives simultaneously (hereafter “interaction model”). However, while support exists for the integration of adaptation and mitigation, very few policies have successfully integrated both objectives in practice (hereafter “separation model”). In addition to the interaction and separation models, we introduce the “adaptation-first model”—an approach to climate policy integration that centers adaptation at the core of forest management, with mitigation as one benefit amongst others—and assess whether it more effectively characterizes the practical realities of forest management than the separation or interaction models. Drawing on a review of policy documents, a survey (n = 48) and interviews (n = 22) with government managers in British Columbia (BC), Canada, we analyze which of the three models have been used for integrating climate objectives into BC’s forest policy and explore views of government managers on the relationships and trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation and which model should be prioritized for their integration into forest management. Our analysis of climate-focused forest policy documents indicates that a possible shift from the separation to the interaction model is taking place in BC. However, our results also indicate that while government managers support the interaction model in principle, they perceive numerous barriers to policy integration that may prevent the shift towards the interaction model to materialize in practice. Because of the fundamental perceived differences in the levels at which adaptation and mitigation intervene in decision-making, government managers in our study were generally more comfortable with the adaptation-first model, which ultimately suggests the need to rethink how we frame climate integration into forest management and policies.

In recent years, the provision of economic incentives through carbon financing and carbon offsetting has been central to efforts at forest carbon mitigation. However, notwithstanding their potentially important roles in climate policy, forest carbon offsets face numerous barriers which have limited widespread implementation worldwide. This paper uses the case study of the Canadian province of British Columbia to explore the barriers associated with achieving widespread implementation of forest carbon offsets in the next several decades. Drawing on interviews with experts from government, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and First Nations, six main barriers are identified and discussed: (1) deficiencies of carbon markets, (2) limited economic benefits, (3) uncertain climate effectiveness, (4) negative public opinion, (5) limited and uncertain property rights, and (6) governance issues. While respondents from different sectors agreed on various points, divergence was also observed, notably on the trade-off between generating environmentally sound offsets and promoting cost-effective ways to achieve mitigation. We discuss these differences in the context of the goals and objectives of different actors, and offer insights for understanding the uptake (or not) of carbon offset policies.

The most significant carbon mitigation policy currently targeting BC’s forests is the Forest Carbon Offsets Protocol (FCOP) that outlines the rules regulating forest carbon offsets. By applying the Policy Regime Framework to the FCOP, this paper addresses the following specific questions: what is the extent of the policy change brought by FCOP, and what are the main factors that influenced and shaped this policy change? The paper concludes that policy did change: an offset regime was established and FCOP was adopted to steer the development of forest carbon offsets. It is the executive branch of government, and especially Premier Gordon Campbell, that was most influential during problem definition and the decision making around forest carbon offset policy. In addition, environmentalists and First Nations, by advocating for a conservation economy, and the private sector, by lobbying the government to prioritize their economic interests, also influenced the policy making process. However, the actual magnitude of policy change that occurred with the emergence of the forest carbon policy regime is quite limited. Apart from a few conservation and improved forest management projects that mostly benefited First Nations, very few projects have been successfully implemented to date. This limited policy change was caused by various economic, social and political limitations. In particular, the shift in government in 2011 that led to the decision not to implement a cap and trade program significantly reduced marketing opportunities for BC-based forest offsets. In addition, the negative public opinion towards the credibility and effectiveness of forest carbon offsets, the low international price of carbon, the high transaction costs and the lack of financing options strongly restrained their development.

This paper examines the origins, influence, and challenges of the climate movement’s shift to focus on blocking new fossil fuel infrastructure. It addresses four core research questions: (1) How effective has the strategy of place-based resistance to fossil fuel development been at promoting climate action and the reduction of global warming emissions? (2) Does the strategy risk the unintended consequence of feeding place-based resistance to the clean energy transformation? (3) Is there hope in more innovative processes of regulatory review and facility siting that can promote social acceptance of the rapid transition to the clean energy system but avoid the confrontational politics that have characterized fossil fuel resistance? (4) If innovative approaches have been demonstrated to reduce conflict, why are they so rarely used? This paper will use process tracing, government documents, and personal interviews to address these questions.

Land-based emissions are an important contributor to global climate change. Various jurisdictions worldwide have implemented forest carbon mitigation strategies and policies to reduce their GHG emissions or increase carbon sequestration. Yet the policy literature on forest carbon mitigation is limited, and no attempt has been made so far to systematically document a jurisdiction's existing forest carbon mitigation policies and policy gaps. This paper applies policy gap analysis to policies for GHG and forest management in the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada, as a case study focusing on the challenges posed by existing policies and the opportunities for policy innovation to more effectively promote forest carbon mitigation. This policy gap analysis shows that while BC has an ambitious climate action regime for fossil fuel-based emissions, it has few policies explicitly targeting forests or the use of harvested wood products for carbon mitigation. As a result, forest carbon mitigation is an under-exploited opportunity for the province. Throughout history, forest management policies have evolved in response to changing social values, such as protection of fresh water, fish and wildlife, and biodiversity. As this case study of BC illustrates, it is time for jurisdictions to renew their forest policies to more effectively incorporate opportunities for carbon mitigation.

Regulatory reformers have shown increased interest in performance-based regulation that focuses on the objectives being pursued rather than the means or process by which they are achieved. This article examines a revealing case of behavioral response to regulatory reform: the response of regulated entities to a new, more performance-based form of environmental regulation of forest operation in British Columbia, Canada. We examine the implementation of the new system of forest regulation by analyzing the operational plans produced through the first round of the new framework's implementation. We expected to see innovation in the Forest Stewardship Plans proposed by forest companies. However, forest companies' concerns for costs, risk and liability, and values and perceptions of forest management limited the extent of innovation.

What are the features of a good regulatory review process? In this paper we identify criteria for ‘good process’ drawn from a combined reading of the environmental justice and process literature. We then apply these criteria to a case study, assessing four versions of Canadian regulatory review: CEAA 1992, CEAA 2012, the 2017 Expert Panel report, and IAA 2019. We aim to make two contributions. First, we propose a set of ‘good process’ criteria that we hope can be widely applied, reflecting on complementarities and tensions that arise from combining two bodies of scholarship. Second, we identify areas where Canadian review processes have improved over time and those where significant work remains to be done. This work seeks to make a constructive intervention at a time when energy and industrial projects around the world face strong challenges in the legal, political and public domains.

Constitutional conflicts over energy infrastructure are not confined to questions of law. They are also an object of political conflict among strategic actors pursuing their interests. This paper examines how different actors in pipeline disputes have sought to gain strategic advantage by advocating particular positions on constitutional arguments about regulatory jurisdiction, Indigenous rights, and participation in regulatory proceedings. Examples will be taken from the controversies over Line 9, Energy East, Northern Gateway, and the Trans Mountain Expansion Project.

Public participation processes are touted as an effective way to increase the capacity and legitimacy of environmental assessment and the regulatory process that rely on them. Recent changes to the Canadian environmental assessment process narrowed the criteria for who can participate in environmental assessments from any who were interested to those who were most directly affected. This article examines the potential consequences of this change by exploring other areas of Canadian regulatory law where a similar directed affected test has been applied. This new standard risks institutionalizing the long-understood representational bias confronted by more diffuse interest like environmental protection. Restricting participation to the “directly affected” is far too narrow a test for processes like environmental assessment that are designed to determine the public interest.

Market access for Canada’s oil sands has been increasingly contested as proposals for new pipelines have become so controversial. This article develops a framework for political risk analysis and applies it to five pipeline proposals. The political risk to major infrastructure projects is a function of the number of institutional veto points; whether opposition groups have access to veto points; whether the project can take advantage of existing infrastructure; the salience of concentrated environmental risks; and the jurisdictional separation of risks and benefits. Each of the projects faces formidable political risks, but the risks vary in type and magnitude by project.

Advocates of regulatory reform have argued for performance-based regulation that focuses on the objectives being pursued rather than the means or process by which they are achieved. The great promise of performance-based approaches is that they are believed to provide a more cost-effective approach to achieving desired objectives. This article examines the challenges in designing performance-based regulatory approaches in forestry by analyzing the case of regulatory reform in British Columbia, Canada, in the 2000s. A key barrier to achieving a more performance-based regime includes the inherent challenge of identifying measurable objectives when the underlying causal mechanisms between forestry and environmental values are so poorly understood. The distinguishing feature of the new framework in British Columbia is not that it is performance-based, but that it provides greater flexibility to foresters in achieving policy goals through management planning. The design challenge is to find performance standards specific enough to be meaningful and enforceable but not so specific that they eliminate the very flexibility in means that performance-based regulation is trying to promote. In forestry in British Columbia, this challenge has proven sufficiently daunting that its new system of forest practices has proven to be far less performance-based than initially envisioned.

This article examines how powerful policy actors defend themselves against opponents' strategies of conflict expansion through a case study on the oil sands of Alberta. In response to an escalation of criticism of its performance on environmental regulation and related issues, the government of Alberta has pursued a strategy of engaging in several multi-stakeholder consultations. We argue that in examining subsystem change, it is essential to go beyond an examination of formal institutional mechanisms to examine policy impacts. Thus far, despite a significant pluralisation of consultative mechanisms on the oil sands, there is little or no evidence of a shift in power away from pro-oil sands interests. This strategy of selective opening is designed to bolster the legitimacy of the policy process while maintaining control over decision rules and venues.Résumé. Cet article étudie le rapport de force et la stratégie de défense des acteurs politiques lorsqu'un conflit dégénère, comme cela s'est produit dans le dossier des sables bitumineux de l'Alberta. Devant une recrudescence des critiques à l'égard de sa performance au chapitre de la réglementation environnementale, le gouvernement de l'Alberta a adopté une stratégie qui consiste à effectuer des consultations avec plusieurs intervenants. Nous soutenons qu'en examinant les changements du sous-système, il est vital d'aller au delà de la simple étude des mécanismes institutionnels pour évaluer l'impact des politiques. En dépit de la pluralité des mécanismes de consultation mis en place, rien ne semble indiquer qu'une partie quelconque du pouvoir ait échappé aux acteurs de l'exploitation des sables bitumineux. Cette stratégie d'ouverture sélective est conçue pour renforcer la légitimité du processus politique tout en gardant le contrôle sur les prises de décision et les centres décisionnels.

Community-based management is an important trend in natural resource governance. In North America, British Columbia has received considerable attention for its initiatives in community forestry. This article addresses the question of whether British Columbia's initiatives have met the government's intention to provide “local control over forests for local benefits.” We develop an analytical framework for gauging the extent of devolution, and examine the actual distribution of authority over forest management decision making between the provincial government and the community tenure holder. On the basis of document analysis and interviews, we conclude that the degree of devolution thus far is quite modest. The new community tenure is, with a few modest exceptions, essentially a much smaller version of the province's area-based industrial forest tenure. This approach to assessing devolution can be applied to other jurisdictions to help gauge the sincerity of government claims regarding devolving control ove...

The role of forest management in mitigating climate change is a central concern for the Canadian province of British Columbia. The successful implementation of forest management activities to achieve climate change mitigation in British Columbia will be strongly influenced by public support or opposition. While we now have increasingly clear ideas of the management opportunities associated with forest mitigation and some insight into public support for climate change mitigation in the context of sustainable forest management, very little is known with respect to the levels and basis of public support for potential forest management strategies to mitigate climate change. This paper, by describing the results of a web-based survey, documents levels of public support for the implementation of eight forest carbon mitigation strategies in British Columbia's forest sector, and examines and quantifies the influence of the factors that shape this support. Overall, respondents ascribed a high level of importance to forest carbon mitigation and supported all of the eight proposed strategies, indicating that the British Columbia public is inclined to consider alternative practices in managing forests and wood products to mitigate climate change. That said, we found differences in levels of support for the mitigation strategies. In general, we found greater levels of support for a rehabilitation strategy (e.g. reforestation of unproductive forest land), and to a lesser extent for conservation strategies (e.g. old growth conservation, reduced harvest) over enhanced forest management strategies (e.g. improved harvesting and silvicultural techniques). We also highlighted multiple variables within the British Columbia population that appear to play a role in predicting levels of support for conservation and/or enhanced forest management strategies, including environmental values, risk perception, trust in groups of actors, prioritized objectives of forest management and socio-demographic factors.

This paper uses survey information to examine several common assertions about the institutional prerequisites for successful profitability when a First Nation enters an economic enterprise either independently or in joint effort with an outside firm. In the winter of 2004–2005, we interviewed managers on both the First Nations and private sides of joint ventures and other business alliances in Canada, to determine what affected their recent profitability experience. We gathered information on the ages, sizes, and activities of the firms. We also gathered information about the firms’ management structures and relationship with the First Nation, and the characteristics of the government of the First Nation. With a sample size of 40 firms that responded, we found that several institutional characteristics affected profit positively: strong separation of management from band governance, participation in management planning, and the use of staggered terms in band council elections. We found that the likelihood of profitability decreased if the band had been in third party management as well as if there was formal participation of elders or hereditary chiefs in decision making. We offer interpretations of these results.

Using a case study of Clayoquot Sound, this article examines progress and challenges with creating an equal partnership in a case of comanagement of forest resources between indigenous peoples and the state in Canada. The analysis of participants' perceptions revealed a need for careful definition of key terms used in comanagement arrangements to ensure shared understanding and interpretation of goals among the parties, especially given the different worldviews and knowledge systems used by the two parties. In addition, it was found that equality must be analyzed separately for each key function of comanagement, as different factors are involved. Equality in decision making was constrained primarily by the structure of statutory authority, whereas equality in planning was constrained by the capacity gap. Although truly “equal” comanagement has not been achieved in Clayoquot Sound, positive benefits of relationship building and cross-cultural exchange have developed.

Through the Scientific Panel Planning process, First Nations in Clayoquot Sound have had the opportunity to identify and map their culturally significant areas in order to ensure their protection in forest management activities. In this study, individuals involved in forest management from government, industry, and First Nations sectors were interviewed to measure the success of this undertaking. It was found that despite many challenges, First Nations cultural values mapping in Clayoquot Sound has been beneficial for all parties involved in forest management. Key benefits has been an improvement in consultation effectiveness for all parties, and increased confidence among First Nations that their values are being protected. Funding should be provided to allow this process to be completed for the remainder of the landbase. Key words: First Nations, cultural values mapping, British Columbia, Nuu-chah-nulth

(2001). Globalization and policy convergence: Symposium overview. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice: Vol. 3, Globalization and Policy Convergence, pp. 127-132.

Policy analysis has usually been organized around the concept of the policy sector, which has served as the fundamental unit for analyzing policy change. The emergence of well-defined and institutionalized issue subsectors, however, has called the utility of a purely sectoral analysis of policy dynamics into question. Utilizing evidence from a case study of forest policy development in British Columbia, Canada, in the 1990s, this article suggests that understanding policy change in complex sectors such as forestry requires a more nuanced conceptualization and analysis of sector–subsectoral relationships than exists in the present literature. The article develops the notion of critical subsectors, capable of blocking or enabling overall levels and directions of sectoral policy change, as an essential tool required to understand policy dynamics.

This article evaluates the environmental criticisms of free trade that have been such an important part of the critique of globalization. The first section briefly surveys the range of criticisms environmentalists have brought against the new economic order. The second section examines the available literature on the “race to the bottom,” one of the key concerns. The third section analyzes the World Trade Organization trade rules and how they have been interpreted by dispute resolution panels involving environmental issues. The fourth section turns to the specific rules of the North American Free Trade Agreement and examines several case studies of environmental issues in that region. The final section provides a summary evaluation of the environmental criticisms. The article argues that the environmental criticisms are exaggerated. Trade agreements leave far more room for domestic environmental measures than is frequently argued. The political globalization of the environmental movement has helped counter the threat to environmental policy created by the economic and trade aspects of globalization. Environmentalists do need to be careful about how they advance this critique of globalization, however, because their arguments risk becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Network and regime approaches to policy studies are both organized around the idea of a policy-specific subsystem. The problem with this sectoral focus is that it overlooks a potentially important source of policy: the intersection of one sector with another. This article analyses one example of policy change through sector intersection: the case of Clayoquot Sound on the western side of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Prior to the late 1980s B.C. forest policy was conducted through a traditional regime emphasizing the mutually compatible interests of industry and government. Aboriginal policy, such as it was, was made in a relatively distinct policy regime. As a result of a critical combination of conditions in the early 1990s, these two policy regimes intersected, producing dramatic policy changes. This article analyses the separate regimes for forest and aboriginal policy in British Columbia and how the two regimes have been transformed in recent years and become increasingly entangled. The focus is then turned to Clayoquot Sound, a Crucible of change, where these developments have been taken to their greatest extreme. The article concludes by examining the implications of these developments beyond Clayoquot Sound and for theories of public policy. Sommaire: L'etude des politiques qui fait appel aux methodes dites de «reseau» et de «regime» est axee sur l'idee d'un sous-systeGme caracteristique de la politique. Cette methode sectorielle a le desavantage de negliger une source de politiques qui peut stre importante: l'intersection d'un secteur avec un autre. L'article analyse un exemple de changement de politique entraiine par l'intersection de deux secteurs: il s'agit du cas de la baie Clayoquot, sur le cote ouest de I'ele de Vancouver, en Colombie -Britannique. Avant la fin des annees 80, les politiques forestieres de la Colombie Britannique suivaient un regime traditionnel qui mettait l'acccent sur les interets mutuellement compatibles de I'industrie et du gouvernement. Les politiques autochtones, si modestes fussent-elles, etaient formulees dans le cadre d'un regime distinct. Lorsqu'une combinaison critique de conditions s'est produite au debut des annees 1990, il y a eu intersection de ces deux regimes de formulation des politiques, produisant des modifications profondes de politiques. Cet article analyse les deux regimes differents de politiques forestieres et autochtones en Colombie-Britannique ainsi que leur evolution au cours de ces dernieres annees qui a menea leur enchevetrement croissant. On se penchent ensuite sur le cas de la baie Clayoquot, point focal du changement, ou ces tendances ont atteint leur niveau extrome. Pour conclure, l'article examine les repercussions de cette evolution, au-dell de la baie Clayoquot, sur les diverses theories de politique gouvernmentale.

Ken Lertzman, Jeremy Rayner and Jeremy Wilson provide an idea-based approach to explaining changes in British Columbia's forest policy by applying the concept of learning developed by Paul Sabatier as part of his “advocacy coalition framework.” This effort to highlight the importance of ideas and learning is a welcome development in Canadian policy studies. But a word of caution is in order as well, because the article has some indications of slipping into a disconcerting pattern in the development of our discipline. For periods of time we seem to single out one significant variable and pay an inordinate amount of attention to it, the most striking examples being interest groups in the 1950s and 1960s and institutions in the 1980s. As we seize upon the new variable, we discredit the previous generation of scholars who we claim (sometimes misleadingly) ignored it.

This article uses the case of toxic substance regulation to examine the process of governmental agenda-setting. Two kinds of comparisons are employed: across-national comparison of Canada and the United States, and a comparison of two toxic substance controversies. In the case of dioxins from pulp mills, the issue emerged on the two Countries' agendas at approximately the same time. In contrast, the issue of indoor air pollution from radon reached the US regulatory agenda in 1986, but as of mid-1990 had yet to emerge as a significant regulatory issue in Canada. The comparative case analysis yields four major conclusions: (1) changes in science and technology can be important driving forces behind the emergence of an issue, but as necessary, not sufficient conditions for agenda-setting; (2) the interdependence of the two countries produces an interdependence of their regulatory agendas; (3) policy entrepreneurs play a fundamental role in forcing issues onto the governmental agenda; and (4) the incentives and influence of policy entrepreneurs is shaped by the institutional structures and political cultures of the two countries.

This article analyzes the American influence on Canadian environmental regulation in order to show the international sources of domestic public policy, especially the manner in which Canadian policy development is influenced by the United States, and the specific dynamics of Canadian regulatory policy. The United States influences Canadian domestic public policy by the export of costs and the export of knowledge. An analysis of major developments in the areas of air pollution, water pollution, pesticides, toxic substance regulation, and environmental impact assessment demonstrates that American influence over Canadian environmental regulation is pervasive. The most frequent pattern is emulation, where value convergence combined with U.S. leadership leads to Canadian borrowing of U.S. policy innovations. This process can be either elite-driven or activist-driven, the latter being characterized by an enlarged scope of conflict, media exposure, and pressure campaigns on policymakers.

A key priority of the ‘Reagan Revolution’ was an attack on the system of health, safety, and environmental regulation that arose in the 1970s. This article evaluates Reagan's regulatory reforms through the lens of one particularly important case study, the regulation of pesticides. This case will be used to explore two issues: (1) an empirical question about the magnitude of policy change achieved by the Reagan administration in the area of environmental regulation; and (2) a conceptual and theoretical question about the dynamics of ‘subgovernments’ or ‘issue networks,’ and their relationship to policy change. The analysis reveals that while the Reagan administration has produced important changes in both policy style and substance, in comparison to the changes that occurred around 1970, they have been relatively modest. Reagan's reform efforts failed largely because the President only controls a subset of the relevant components of the policy ‘regime’. Environmental interests were strongly entrenched in regime elements beyond Reagan's immediate control - in particular Congress, the courts, and the ruling public philosophy - and were thus able to thwart many of Reagan's initiatives.

This article is a comparative case study of environmental regulation in Canada and the United States, focussing on one important area of environmental regulation, pesticides, and on the treatment of North America's most commercially important pesticide, alachlor. Alachlor is a clear case of policy divergence: Canadians have banned the substance while the US has decided to keep it on the market with minimal restrictions. Three major explanations for the divergence are explored: science, interest group politics, and legal and institutional arrangements. The article concludes that while different interpretations of the risks posed by alachlor contributed to the different decisions, they can only be explained with reference to the economic importance of alachlor and the need to maintain the legitimacy of current institutional arrangements. The concluding section outlines a framework for explaining similarities and differences in environmental, health and safety regulations across nations.

Drawing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, this collection of essays, part of the Trends Project of the Government of Canada, examines North American integration and its potential future impact on Canadian life. Trends in integration, knowledge gaps, and policy implications are analyzed in eight areas: trade, the labour market, the brain drain, macroeconomics, federalism, social welfare, the environment, and culture. The contributors argue the consequences of continental integration have not been as formidable as widely believed. While some policy instruments have been surrendered in exchange for access to larger markets and pressures for harmonization have probably increased, Canada still retains significant room to maneuver, even in areas of policy most affected by growing economic integration. The most severe constraints imposed by globalization may be more in the mind than in a reality that is enormously complex and ambiguous. Canada has formidable capacities for domestic policy choices in a wide range of sectors. It is up to Canadians and their elected officials to chose how to exercise that freedom of choice.