On February 7th 2006, environmentalists claimed victory when the provincial government announced their plan for the protection of the Great Bear Rainforest. After a decade of conflict which attracted international attention and culminated in 1999 with the boycott of wood and paper products derived from the GBR by large companies including Lowe’s, Ikea and the Home Depot, an agreement was announced.
In December 2003 a multi-stakeholder consensus land-use agreement, which included environmental and industry representatives, was reached on the central coast and in June 2004 the agreements were formally presented to the provincial government and the local First Nation governments. Since that time up until February’s announcement the two nations have been in closed-door government-to-government negotiation presumably hammering out the details on the land-use plan. Those three years of silence provoked much speculation as to what the agreement would entail and how it would be implemented in order to include First Nations in the decision making process. However on February 7th the only substantive management decisions confirmed in the announcement of the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement was the protection from logging of 2 million hectares.
The announcement also came with promises to apply Ecosystem Based Management by 2009 and to achieve comprehensive First Nations involvement in the management of their traditional territory located within the GBR. Noticeable absent however, was a definition and clarification of the components of EBM or any details on the role, power and authority of First Nation involvement in the management of the Great Bear Rainforest and how it will be implemented/institutionalized. In the Provincial press release there was a reference to the formation of Land and Resource Forums in order to facilitate a provincial and First Nations working relationship to finalize and implement the land use plans; however the composition and relative power of these forums was not addressed.
So what exactly has been agreed upon other than the amount of protected area, to warrant the media frenzy of the February 7th announcement? At this point in time it is hard to tell as we are left to continue speculating as to what EBM entails and what exactly this agreement will mean for First Nations.
The GBR encompasses the traditional territory of twenty-five First Nations. The government states that all twenty-five were consulted during the planning process. Eighteen First Nations who were represented in the LRMP process are expected to sign government-to-government land use agreements with the Province. Four First Nations have refused to join in the planning process stating that it is inconsistent with their rights to land and traditional values and consequently inconsistent with the principles of the New Relationship