4 research outputs found

    Governance and geopolitics as drivers of change in the Canadian boreal zone

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    The Canadian boreal forest is primarily public land, owned and managed by provincial governments on behalf of the public interest. Boreal forest governance consists of a complex patchwork of federal and provincial legislation, policies, tenures, and delegated authorities designed to achieve multiple (and often conflicting) social, ecological, and economic objectives. We examine the implications of boreal governance arrangements for sustainable management of ecosystem services. The paper shows how current multi-level governance arrangements that evolved from Canada’s Constitution Act are not effective at managing the cross-scale and cross-sectoral challenges of ecosystem services and have created a crisis of legitimacy for forest decisions. We show how the rise of nonstate arrangements, marketization, and decentralization are partly a response to governance gaps for ecosystem services as well as a reflection of global trends in forest governance. Past trends related to governance themes (the role and scope of government, the level of integration and coordination, Indigenous empowerment, and geopolitical influences) are used to motivate future governance scenarios.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author
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