Bissix, Glyn
(1999)
Dimensions of power in forest resource decision-making:
a case study of Nova Scotia’s forest conservation legislation.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
This study identifies power relationships within forest conservation decision-making in
Nova Scotia, Canada. Rather than rely on the ‘customary science’ of resource
conservation largely based on biological and physical parameters, this analysis is steeped
in the traditions of social science and policy analysis. This study’s central focus is the
Forest Improvement Act (FIA): 1962-1986. Forest conservation policies and legislative
initiatives developed prior to FIA enactment such as the Small Tree Act (STA): 1942 - 1965 are treated in this study as the FIA’s policy gestation period. Theoretical and
practical insights derived from this pre-FIA period are used in the assessment of the FIA
and these combined understandings are subsequently applied to the analysis of
contemporary forest conservation policy. For contemporary analysis, six case studies
including the Nova Scotia Envirofor process and the St. Mary’s River Landscape and
Ecology Management proposal, as well as a recent provincial government initiative are
examined.
This study utilises a broad range of decision-making and resource management theory to
tease out understandings of the particular character of the policy process. The analysis
utilises various decision-making models, theories of power, and multi-agency decision making models as well as the Environmental Modernisation literature developed by
Turner, O’Riordan and Weale and others. In addition to the investigative methodologies
used generally throughout this study, the Envirofor and the St. Mary’s case studies
employed a ‘participant observer’ approach that provided otherwise unavailable insights
into these conservation initiatives.
Regardless of policy content, this study shows that external forces such as woodfibre
markets were key to the implementation of ground level forest conservation. Ironically,
this study links the renewal of forest conservation legislation to the demand for increased
forest exploitation. New forest policy initiatives were as much to do with pacifying
conservation interests as they were about promoting ground level forest conservation.
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