Does a Crisis Matter? Forest Policy Responses to the Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic in British Columbia Harry Nelson Research Associate, Forest Resources Management, Faculty of Forestry, 2045-2424 Main Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4 (phone (604) 827-3478; fax: (604) 822-9106; e-mail: [email protected]). “[a]n epidemic of catastrophic proportions"...Larry Pedersen, Chief Forester in 2003, in describing the impact of the outbreak. What factors are responsible for the introduction of new policies (especially those involving substantive change) is a phenomenon that is still poorly understood. Researchers have identified policy windows where a confluence of events, such as a change in government, the emergence of a new issue, and ongoing policy processes, come together to create the opportunity for new policy development. Natural disasters can open such policy windows by drawing attention to an issue and mobilizing political will. Yet at the same time, even if policy windows do open, they may not result in effective policy development. The institutional setting in which such policies are developed also plays a key role. In the case of the Canadian forest sector, the combination of public resources and private capital make policy development especially challenging. Although the scale of the Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic in British Columbia is unprecedented, and will change the nature of the forest resource (and by extension the industry and communities that rely upon it), the policy response has been limited to short-term measures. Although some policy reform was introduced, policy makers have yet to address the question of whether more fundamental changes are required in order to address the full consequences of the epidemic. La d´etermination des facteurs responsables de l’introduction de nouvelles politiques (particuli`erement celles qui comportent des changements substantiels) demeurent un ph´enom`ene mal compris. Des chercheurs ont d´etermin´e des fenˆetres d’opportunit´e politique o`u divers e´ v´enements, tels qu’un changement de gouvernement, l’´emergence d’une nouvelle pr´eoccupation et des processus politiques continus, convergent pour cr´eer l’occasion d’´elaborer de nouvelles politiques. Les catastrophes naturelles peuvent cr´eer ces fenˆetres d’opportunit´e politique en attirant l’attention sur une pr´eoccupation et en mobilisant la volont´e politique. Pourtant, mˆeme si des fenˆetres d’opportunit´e politique s’ouvrent, elles peuvent ne pas se solder par l’´elaboration de politiques efficaces. Le cadre institutionnel dans lequel ces politiques sont e´ labor´ees joue aussi un rˆole important. Dans le cas du secteur forestier canadien, la combinaison de ressources publiques et de capitaux priv´es rend l’´elaboration de politiques particuli`erement d´elicate. Bien que l’´etendue de l’´epid´emie de dendroctone du pin ponderosa en Colombie-Britannique soit sans pr´ec´edent et modifiera la nature de la ressource foresti`ere (et par extension, l’industrie et les collectivit´es qui en d´ependent), la r´eaction politique s’est limit´ee a` des mesures a` court terme. Malgr´e une certaine r´eforme des politiques, les d´ecideurs doivent s’interroger sur la n´ecessit´e d’apporter ou non des changements fondamentaux suppl´ementaires pour surmonter les cons´equences de l’´epid´emie.
INTRODUCTION Opportunities to create major policy change in forestry policy are uncommon, in part due to the multiplicity of values and outputs associated with forests, along with a diverse set of Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 55 (2007) 459–470 459
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stakeholders, that make the questions of how forests are managed and what they should be managed for, complex and difficult ones. Byron (2006) identified three triggers for change in forest policies: implementation failures arising from ineffective institutions or incorrect assumptions; changes in social priorities reflecting changes in values; and new opportunities in how to utilize the forest resource. In Canada, calls for significant forest policy change have been widespread and increasing in the past two decades as changing public expectations about how the forest should be utilized have resulted in a shift in emphasis toward social and environmental objectives relative to the historic focus on economic objectives (Luckert 2005). However, the unique nature of the forest institutions in Canada makes change even more difficult than in other countries (Haley and Nelson 2007). Provinces across Canada have chosen to develop their forest resource through long-term agreements under which private firms assume obligations in exchange for the rights to harvest the public timber resource. Firms are likely to resist the introduction of new policies if they impose additional costs, and government has historically been reluctant to act absent sufficient industry support. Yet at the same time, given enough urgency, policy makers can and do choose to introduce far-reaching policy changes even if not all stakeholders fully acquiesce (Kamieniecki 2000). Given the widespread calls for new policies, how then might such a system respond when a crisis occurs? Might it trigger substantial policy change? The next section discusses several different approaches to considering how policy change occurs in the face of crisis. I then describe the research method, and turn to an examination of how government responded. I show how the crisis opened a policy window but also how the nature of the crisis, combined by the existing institutional framework, largely circumscribed the policy response. Policy Windows and Crises In considering how policy makers address issues, researchers from different fields have used Kingdon’s model of agenda-setting to describe how issues formally move onto government agendas (Howlett 1998). In the model, policy entrepreneurs inside and outside of government take advantage of policy windows that open up that can lead to policy change and new policy development. Policy windows are created when three different process streams—political, policies, and problems—converge to create the greatest opportunity for policy change.1 What opens the policy window can vary: it may be institutionalized events, such as elections that happen with predictability, or unexpected occurrences, such as an airliner crash, that serve as focusing events that can then lead to the streams converging. Kingdon suggests that there are two main types of window: a “political” window, where an election or change in public concern opens the window; and a “problem” window, where an issue or problem captures government attention (Kingdon 1984). Kingdon (1984) also describes why policy windows close: if participants feel that the problem has been addressed; if they do not achieve any results; if the crisis is short-lived; or if new participants decide that the issue no longer warrants attention or there is no solution to the problem and its political prominence fades. Michaels et al (2006) argue that sudden, exceptional experiences that lead to harm or expose the prospect for great devastation serve as focusing events that can open policy windows. t’Hart and Boin (2001) suggest that the nature of the crisis cannot only determine whether or not a window opens but also contribute to it closing: while the severity of the disruption created by the crisis may spur action, if the end is indeterminate or the scale appears overwhelming the policy
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window can close without any new substantive policies developed as any efforts appear futile. Solecki and Michaels (1994), in an analysis of how different regional planning organizations responded to two types of natural disasters (an earthquake and hurricane), found that in those events policy windows did not appear to open. Organizational Responses to Crises Another area of research has been in exploring how a crisis influences decision making within organizations and at a political level. How quickly each crisis arrives, and the different degrees of threat, urgency, and uncertainty all influence both the organizational and political response. The sense of urgency and threat are especially important as they are more likely to attract public attention and mobilize political will and hence the resources that are brought to bear in addressing the problem. Solecki and Michaels (1994) noted that even where windows did open, they did not necessarily result in the development of new policies or change in objectives, results supported by other researchers examining earthquake and flood hazard management (Burby and French 1985; Alesh and Petak 1986). Instead, the organizational and political structures in place are important determinants in influencing policy development. Solecki and Michaels (1994) suggest that three organizational factors are key in turning such events into policy windows that can be exploited: first, a comprehensive view of the issues (rather than a narrow focus on selected aspects); second; an organization that is flexible and empowered to respond in a substantive fashion; and third, the presence of a policy entrepreneur to champion new policies. In some cases, the policy response may be conditional on the presence of the crisis; policies that were viewed as restrictive and relaxed during the crisis may be reinstated when the crisis passes. t’Hart and Boin (2001) note that the decision to “terminate” a crisis is often a political decision to “end” or at least lower the political importance of the issues that it raised as new issues emerge (regardless of whether the consequences persist). Therefore, while a crisis may provide the basis for change, organizational and political factors may support or impede policy development. Indeed, t’Hart and Boin (2001) emphasize that a little-studied aspect of crisis is the opportunity it may create for policy reform through relaxing key institutional constraints. Determinants of Institutional Change Institutional economics considers more broadly how institutions (which covers not only the organizations themselves but also the “rules” and legislation that provide the governance framework) operate and how they might affect policy development (North 1990). Luckert (2005) notes that the main approach has been through property rights theory that examines the link between how rights are constructed and their influence on firm and agent behavior. Policy analysis then considers how different configurations of rights lead to different outcomes and the distributional impact of changes in benefits streams associated with alternative policies. Luckert (1991), in a case study of forest tenures in British Columbia, argues that the effect of any changes in rights or obligations had to be taken into account in designing new policies as these change the incentives firms face and hence their behavior. He emphasizes that particular attention has to be paid to whether or not the effect of such polices may lead to the elimination of any economic benefits to the firm from harvesting.
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Ideology also plays a role in institutional change, as it explains the mental model of how individuals evaluate the world and provides the basis for their normative judgments that are important aspects to public policy making (Schluter 2007). In their study of forest policy changes in Europe, Kissling-Naf and Bisang (2001) identify where changes in the political regime paved the way for more substantive changes in forest policies in Eastern European countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. However, they also note that it is more difficult to introduce more fundamental reforms, especially in regard to the introduction of a rights-based approach where none existed before (Kissling-Naf and Bisang 2001). Research Method The assessment of the policy response to Mountain Pine Beetle is based in part on interviews with both industry participants and government officials on the effectiveness of the different measures implemented by government and how well they achieved their objectives. This follows the triangulation or convergence method as used by Jick (1979) where multiple viewpoints are considered, along with external data, to give more confidence in the research results. This approach is used to evaluate organizational responses where qualitative analysis is an integral part of the research (Meyer 1982). Solecki and Michaels (1994) and Michaels et al (2006) used a similar approach. In this research, a series of semistructured interviews were conducted with firm and industry association representatives, along with key government policy makers. A total of 20 interviews were conducted. In each interview, several standardized questions were asked in regard to the nature of the crisis and an assessment of the policy response that happened and its effectiveness along with how the interviewee’s particular organization had responded. Additional data from press releases, action plans prepared by the government, along with secondary sources, such as newspaper clippings, were used to provide corroboration. Assessing the Policy Response There are then three aspects to the event that are important in explaining the policies that were developed in response to the outbreak. First, how was the crisis framed and perceived by the different organizations that were involved in policy development? Second, did the crisis result in a policy window opening, and if it did, how long did it remain open? And third, how did the institutional setting impact the policies that were adopted? Did it facilitate or circumscribe certain policy options? Before doing so, however, I describe the event itself, the institutional arrangements governing forest policy, and then the policy response. The Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic Insect infestations are part of the natural cycle in forests, and indeed British Columbia has experienced Mountain Pine Beetle outbreaks before, the most recent being one in the West Central part of the Interior in the 1980s. In such an outbreak, as populations expanded in an area, tree mortality would increase and the infestation would start to expand in an area until cold winters would interrupt the cycle as it would lead to increased beetle mortality and populations would fall to low endemic levels. In fact, from an ecological viewpoint, researchers do not necessarily view the current infestation as a crisis, as outbreaks are part
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Figure 1. Volume of mature timber killed by the Mountain Pine Beetle (millions of m3 )
of the natural cycle (Taylor et al 2006). However the scale of the current epidemic is much greater because of past fire suppression and climate change (Safranyik and Carroll 2006). Figure 1 illustrates the volumes of mature timber killed by the beetle and the dramatic expansion in the past five years. This has raised concerns about the possible impact of losing large proportions of forest cover and its effects on habitat, hydrological functioning, and increased risk of wildfire (Natural Resources Canada 2005). However, the Provincial government has primarily framed the epidemic in terms of the impact it will have on timber supply (Pedersen 2003) and the crisis is therefore now being largely defined in terms of the socioeconomic consequences that will follow from reduced harvest levels in the future that in some areas may fall by 50% or more from preepidemic levels. The Institutional Setting A key area of forest policy making in British Columbia is around those policies that govern the allocation and management of the forest resource in those areas. These are primarily done through long-term tenure agreements in which the provincial government grants access to the crown forest resource to private firms in exchange for undertaking investment in developing the resource. While firms enter into and hold these agreements for the financial benefits that accrue from harvesting the timber and converting it, they not only assume an obligation to pay for the timber but must also assume obligations in regard to meeting social and environmental objectives set by the provincial government. These objectives range from the provision of employment in local communities as well as providing opportunities for public participation in local management decisions to the maintenance of biodiversity and wildlife habitat, and long-term enhancement of the forest resource. The implementation of these objectives in the management of the resource are then carried out by the firms through their development of harvesting plans (which incorporate these different objectives) which determine what and where they will harvest as well as in their responsibility to carry out reforestation following the harvest. Indeed, while the province can offer new licenses that direct the license holder
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into certain areas or timber types, they have no such power over existing replaceable licenses that are largely held by the firms that hold the processing capacity. Therefore, the government has to rely in large part on establishing the right incentives if it wishes firms to carry out certain activities or achieve desired outcomes as it cannot directly mandate firms directly to do so. This institutional framework in which responsibility is delegated to private firms to carry out public objectives therefore serves as the key mechanism through which any changes in objectives and therefore management policies must then be implemented.2 The Policy Response Both the provincial and federal government have responded to the outbreak although the British Columbia government is the only one to develop specific forest policies given its jurisdiction over the forest resources. The federal government has contributed funding for assistance and research.3 The main policy approaches taken by the provincial government have been in redeploying and increasing harvesting activity by firms operating in the affected area. Interviewees identified two distinct phases where new polices were introduced and subsequently modified; the first, a control phase, was aimed at stemming the spread of the beetle and having firms shift their effort from harvesting healthy green timber to infested trees in areas where the outbreak was occurring. In the second, a salvage phase, the policy focus shifted to increasing harvest levels to utilize the dead and dying trees. Currently, most of the harvesting effort is directed toward salvage activities, although there are smaller areas on the edge of the epidemic where there are still some control efforts being undertaken. Policy changes were introduced in two key areas, notably timber pricing and allocation mechanisms. During the control phase, the government recognized that in order to have firms shift their harvesting activity away from healthy, green wood to beetle-infested trees, that it would need to make the changes cost neutral from a company perspective (British Columbia Ministry of Forests 2001). The most efficient way to do this was through the timber pricing or stumpage system. As efforts were directed toward harvesting small areas of infested trees that were more distant and in nontraditional operating areas, this led to the development early on of special salvage rates based on the patch size as well as haul allowances that allowed for timber to go to more distant mills (as the stumpage system was based on pricing timber to the closest mill site). During the salvage phase, the special rates and haul allowances were either dropped or modified. Instead, more significant changes were made to the timber pricing system itself (although these were not fully implemented until 2006) (British Columbia Ministry of Forests 2006). Historically there had been little differentiation within the system itself for log quality; timber was either deemed to be a green sawlog with no distinction for quality or size; dead timber sold for a nominal amount and was excluded from the determination of harvest levels. Two changes were then introduced: first, log grades were introduced such that dead sawlog quality material was no longer sold at the statutory minimum; and second, that volume would now count against a licensee’s annual cutting rights. However, the more fundamental change was in terms of the timber pricing system itself. Previously it had consisted of a complex administrative system where the rates depended on product prices indices; the new system was one based on market transactions that would take into account the decline in values associated with beetle-killed timber.
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The government also moved to increase harvest levels in order to capture as much value from the timber as it could before it became uneconomic to utilize. The results of the uplifts associated with the Mountain Pine Beetle were significant; the overall increases compared to previous levels of Annual Allowable Cut in the area affected were 60% or more. Here the government chose to make the additional timber volumes available through short-term volume-based agreements known as Nonreplaceable Forest Licenses (NRFLs), as well as expanding the volumes available through the government’s timber sales program (which had been recently restructured). These NRFLs were awarded using three different methods: competitive sales in which the highest bidder paid a lump sum plus ongoing stumpage payments; direct awards in which they were directly allocated to new license holders; and by basing the award on commitments to build new non–lumberprocessing capacity. The Changing Nature of the Crisis and Policy Windows Although the beetle epidemic can be traced to outbreaks that started in the early 1990s, the first formal policy responses did not take place until 2001. Interviewees suggested that the delayed response was largely due to the fact that it was first treated as a local problem and that the outbreak would run its normal course and be brought to a halt by a cold winter event, as it had in the past. However, as the infested area continued to spread over the next several years, it raised concern within the broader region and local government and company officials collaborated to press their concerns through the industrial association representing firms in the region. The organization embarked upon an effort in 2000 to increase public awareness in order to mobilize political action. Indeed, the interviews suggested that these efforts contributed to raising the profile of the outbreak that, combined with the increasing scale of the infestation, helped make it a problem that had to be addressed. At the same time there was also a change in the political stream. The newly elected Liberal government in 2000 had chosen to pursue a more market-based strategy and appeared more predisposed toward taking more immediate actions to protect and recover the economic values associated with the forest resource than the previous government. The government had also been contemplating changes in its timber pricing policies for some time and was also being pressed politically to make changes in its timber allocation policies.4 Together, these two streams led to a policy window that opened in 2000 that lasted for several years and contributed to the policy changes. Perceptions of how to address the crisis also influenced the policy response. Initially, in the control phase, policy makers and others believed the appropriate approach was to treat the outbreak as one would a fire, attacking hot spots (localized concentrations of beetles) through harvesting activities that in turn control and eventually suppress the outbreak. Over time, as the infestation continued to grow despite the measures that had been implemented, decision makers’ perspective of the epidemic changed from a problem that could be controlled to adapting to a crisis that was inevitable.5 The policy focus has therefore shifted to extracting as much economic value from beetle-killed trees as possible and how to mitigate the reduction in timber supply that will happen in 10 years’ time and last for several decades. However, it is also apparent that the policy window has closed even though a number of stakeholders (namely firms and communities) felt that the policies developed do not deal with the full socioeconomic consequences of the epidemic, especially the predicted
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disruption in timber supply and its impact on the industry and employment and by extension on forest-dependent communities in the area. In this case the window closed, not because the epidemic went away (if anything, it expanded even more quickly), but because the sense of political urgency started to evaporate. Industry interviewees felt that government had started to take a more fatalistic view that little could be done as the epidemic progressed and that the focus was now only on how much timber could be harvested before it lost all economic value. From their perspective, government had reverted to a more “business as usual” approach and was less willing to explore alternative approaches or develop new policies to address issues raised by the epidemic, especially the longer-term consequences of the epidemic. From a government perspective, officials felt that while initially there had been a shared sense of commitment and responsibility to address the problems raised by the outbreak, over time the industry had shifted into more of a negotiating position in regard to seeking policy changes that would benefit themselves and that were not consistent with government objectives, instead seeking to maximize short-term economic returns through harvesting the highest-valued timber possible. From a broader political perspective, public interest outside of the affected communities waned after the announcement of action plans and funding commitments that offered the promise of resolving the issues associated with the epidemic (although this was not a sentiment shared in those communities). There also did not appear to be any policy entrepreneurs pushing for overall change for the system; instead, there was only the effort to push for changes around timber pricing.6 The Institutional Limitations to Policy Change While the Mountain Pine Beetle crisis did spur policy change in the areas of timber pricing and allocation, the degree of change differed, resulting in more substantive policy reform in terms of pricing but only incremental changes in terms of allocation. Several government officials noted that a part of the policy-making process in British Columbia is the consultative process government goes through in making policy changes with industry, a fact noted by other observers (Kamieniecki 2000). Interviews confirmed that timber pricing is one of the key variables influencing firm behavior and also one of the most contentious areas of policy change. Policy makers had wanted to introduce changes to the timber pricing system for a number of years but industry resistance to change had precluded their adoption. However, as the volume of dead sawlogs started increasing, combined with the realization that in future the existing timber pricing system would not adequately address the changing quality of the timber resource, firms acquiesced to making such changes although they continue to express reservations about how well the newly introduced system reflects current costs and values. In this case the epidemic contributed to helping overcome previous institutional constraints. The more incremental policy changes in terms of allocation reflect the fact that these are more fundamental changes to the system and therefore elicit even greater industry resistance. Industry did not resist the introduction of NRFLs in part because it did not lead to any changes in their existing rights and, indeed, it simply meant that more timber volume was being made available to be processed through their facilities. Indeed, as the government decided to award a significant portion to First Nations in an effort to address aboriginal concerns over treaty rights, this also helped relieve some short-term political pressure in terms of allocation policies.7 Yet government and industry officials also noted
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that by allocating such licenses, even if they were short-term and nonreplaceable, the government had also created new claims on the resource at the same time the future availability was going to fall, heightening potential political conflict. In this case, there was not a willingness to make more fundamental changes to the tenure system itself, despite the fact that changing resource values will make it even more difficult to achieve the traditional economic, environmental, and social objectives. Indeed, as the public continues to demand greater weight be given noneconomic objectives, while politicians and communities continue to express worry about the effect of reduced employment and mill closings on forest-dependent communities, it can be expected that this pressure will intensify as both the quantity of timber available decreases and the value of that timber declines. The conflict between different objectives will only be heightened (McGarrity and Hoberg 2005). Yet at the same time the policy response also revealed how difficult it is to establish new objectives. A number of interviewees felt that although the policy focus in terms of salvage clearly emphasized economic objectives, there was no clear goal in the policies that had been introduced: they were unsure as to whether the goal was to maximize shortterm timber revenue by targeting recently attacked trees; maximize long-term revenue by salvaging as many trees as possible before they lost in value (requiring harvesting trees that were in a further stage of attack); or trying to maximize the long-term timber supply regardless of the economic costs associated in doing so. Here preexisting paradigms in terms of forest management (such as an emphasis on maintaining and maximizing predictable levels of harvest), combined with the political difficulty of introducing changes in objectives (where the political will is lacking absent a public consensus) help explain the lack of more substantive policy response. Perhaps the more fundamental question is what role the government should play in developing policy responses for the post-beetle world. The full effects of the reduced timber supply is expected to materialize in 10 or more years’ time, which offers individuals and firms time to make their own decisions as to how they want to respond. Market adjustment is an alternative to potentially costly and perhaps unsuccessful efforts to maintain the timber supply or offset the community impacts with other programs that are ultimately not economically justified. Given that falldown has been recognized as an inevitable part of industry transition across Canada, the effects of the Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic should be discussed within this framework and consideration should be given to the limitations of what government can do. More generally the long-term timber supply planning approach in predicting future timber supply can lead to expectations that government has greater control over future events than it actually does.8 In fact, government policy efforts to craft some long-term response may have perverse incentives as individuals and communities (rather than initiating actions that make sense from their own economic circumstances) lobby for relief even as their economic fortunes decline.9 CONCLUSIONS While it was clear that the crisis did trigger some policy reform, that reform was limited. The most substantive changes were around the timber pricing system, which had been a longstanding policy goal of the government. Industry had resisted the implementation of these changes over concerns on their overall costs and the uncertainty as to how such systems would work but the epidemic helped overcome this resistance, not only because
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it was apparent that the system had to change, but also indirectly as the increased timber volumes that were being made available reduced some of the risk associated with shortterm timber availability (firms could reasonably assume that sufficient timber would be available at competitive prices). This is perhaps unsurprising; at least in the short-term, there was little need for the system itself to change, as it simply required expanding to handle higher volumes of timber and the existing system is oriented around trying to generate as much timber volume as possible. Indeed, the additional timber volumes satisfied short-term political demands while not resulting in any fundamental changes in allocation as these rights were of limited duration.10 However provincial governments have yet to consider how well suited the existing system is to address the full consequences of the epidemic, especially when the availability of timber (and the quality of the remaining timber) start to decline significantly. Indeed the questions posed by the epidemic are likely to increasingly face Crown forest managers across Canada in the future as climate change and associated changing environmental conditions across Canada increase the risk of drought, wildfires, and even the mountain pine beetle spreading into the boreal forest (it has already entered Alberta). Responding to these issues requires consideration of how well adapted existing systems based on even, predictable timber flows are to such disruptive events. It is to the credit of policy makers that they do recognize that adapting to these changing circumstances will require a change in policies and indeed these changes may need to be much deeper and transformative than has been the case in the past (Betts 2006). Yet at the same time the limited response in British Columbia underscores the difficulty of change and how briefly the window stays open and how limited change may be when the consequences are in the future, more remote, and appear inevitable. NOTES 1
The political stream consists of the characteristics of the political process (ideology, election cycles, structure of legislative bodies), while the problems stream consists of the characteristic of the issues that arise and the policy stream consists of the development of policy solutions (Howlett 1998). 2 Given the predominance of publicly owned land in British Columbia (94%), this means that the majority of the timber harvest—typically in excess of 85% or more—is coming from public lands. 3 The Federal government has promised $1 billion while the provincial government has made commitments of close to $500 million (British Columbia Ministry of Forests 2005). 4 Indeed the provincial government in 2003 introduced a broad set of forest policy reforms covering the entire province (Niquidet et al 2006). 5 Indeed, it is possible that such measures may have been effective a few years earlier when beetle populations were lower. However, given how rapidly populations can expand in the epidemic phase (doubling each year), the effort required at this stage to suppress populations may no longer have been feasible. 6 The provincial government also introduced what could be considered a policy champion within the organization by creating a position called the “Beetle Boss” within the Ministry of Forests in 2001 (Stirling 2002). The idea of a Beetle Boss was modeled on the idea of a fire boss—a local decision maker empowered to draw upon whatever resources were required to suppress a fire. However the purpose of the Beetle Boss was simply to provide a focal point for the policy responses and he did not have the authority to make any policy changes, thereby limiting the effectiveness of this response. The one area in which he had any authority was during the control phase, the ability to designate areas Emergency Mountain Pine Beetle management zones. This permitted the use of the special timber pricing allowances as well as the use of streamlined regulations that expedited
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harvesting approvals. Following the control phase, the role has changed to one of providing more coordination within the ministry in response to the different issues raised and the Beetle Boss does not enjoy any special powers under the salvage phase. 7 While industry officials did not disagree with the general approach, they felt that this had caused a short-term disruption in the timber supply as some of these volumes were being delayed in entering the market. This delay was having a twofold effect: first, the impact on overall timber availability within localized areas; and second, the subsequent deterioration in quality that would reduce the amount of revenue that could be recovered in the long term. 8 “Such alterations have taken place under the guise of rational planning and created an illusion of human capacity to impose not only order on the environment but also to alter the environment to conform to human will” (Ingram 2001, p. 298) in referring to large-scale water development in arid areas. 9 This is not to suggest that there is no role for government. Rather it would be in developing transition strategies for individuals and communities rather than maintaining the belief that the system as a whole can be expected to sustain current levels of economic outputs while simultaneously meeting all of the other expectations. 10 The increased harvest levels provided a relatively painless way for politicians to meet political commitments to First Nations and communities more generally that followed from the policy changes in 2003 avoided the political cost of additional redistribution of cutting rights away from existing licensees that may otherwise have been required. As well the increase in timber supply has had the expected effect of leading to lower log prices; at least from a short-term perspective this made the overall market-based tenure changes introduced several years earlier more palatable to industry (where they had a portion of their cutting rights removed).
REFERENCES Alesh, D. and W. J. Petak. 1986. The Politics and Economics of Earthquake Hazard Mitigation: Unreinforced Masonry Buildings in Southern California. Boulder, Colorado: Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado. Betts, J. 2006. Jim Snetsinger’s poisoned chalice. Canadian Silviculture. February; p. 18. British Columbia Ministry of Forests. 2001. West Central B.C. Mountain Pine Beetle Action Plan 2001. http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/mountain pine beetle/actionplan/2001/actionplan.htm (accessed November 17, 2006). British Columbia Ministry of Forests. 2005. British Columbia’s Mountain Pine Beetle Action Plan 2005–2010. http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/mountain pine beetle/actionplan/2005/ (accessed November 17, 2006). British Columbia Ministry of Forests. 2006. British Columbia’s Mountain Pine Beetle Action Plan 2006–2011. http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/mountain pine beetle/ (accessed November 17, 2006). Burby, R. and S. French. 1985. Flood Plain Land Use Management: A National Assessment. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Byron, N. 2006. Challenges in defining, implementing and renewing forest policies. Unasyslva 57 (223): 10–15. Also available online at http://www.fao.org.docrep/008/a0532e/A0532e03.htm Haley, D. and H. Nelson. 2007. Has the time come to rethink Canada’s crown forest tenure systems? The Forestry Chronicle. In press. Howlett, M. 1998. Predictable and unpredictable policy windows: Institutional and exogenous correlates of Canadian federal agenda-setting. Canadian Journal of Political Science 31 (3): 495– 524. Ingram, H. 2001. Water and the globalizing economy. In Managing Crises: Threats, Dilemmas, Opportunities, edited by U. Rosenthal, A. Boin and L. Comfort, pp. 297–306. Springfield, Ill: Charles C. Thomas.
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Jick, T. 1979. Mixing qualitative and quantitative methods: Triangulation in action. Administrative Science Quarterly 24: 602–11. Kamieniecki, S. 2000. Testing alternative theories of agenda setting: Forest policy change in British Columbia, Canada. Policy Studies Journal 28 (1): 176–89. Kingdon, J. W. 1984. Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies. Boston, MA: Little Brown. Kissling-Naf, I. and K. Bisang. 2001. Rethinking recent changes of forest regimes in Europe through property-rights theory and policy analysis. Forest Policy and Economics 3: 99–111. Luckert, M. 1991. Effect of Canadian forest tenures on rent distributions and resource allocations: A British Columbia case study. Forest Science 37 (5): 1441–62. Luckert, M. 2005. In search of optimal institutions for sustainable forest management: Lessons from developed and developing countries. In Institutions, Sustainability, and Natural Resources: Institutions for Sustainable Forest Management, edited by S. Kant and R. A. Berry, pp. 21–42. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. McGarrity, K. and G. Hoberg. 2005. The beetle challenge: An overview of the mountain pine beetle epidemic and its implications. www.policy.forestry.ubc.ca (accessed November 14, 2006). Meyer, A. 1982. Adapting to environmental jolts. Administrative Science Quarterly 27: 515–37. Michaels, S., N. Goucher, and D. McCarthy. 2006. Policy windows, policy change, and organizational learning: Watersheds in the evolution of watershed management. Environmental Management 38: 983–92. Natural Resources Canada. 2005. Mountain Pine Beetle Initiative. Interim Report. Victoria, BC: Natural Resources Canada, Pacific Forestry Centre. Niquidet, K., H. Nelson and I. Vertinsky. 2006. Pricing the social contract in the British Columbian forest sector. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. In press since June 2007. North, D. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pedersen, L. 2003. How Serious is the Mountain Pine Beetle Problem? From a Timber Supply Perspective. Presentation at the Canadian Forest Service Symposium, Kelowna, BC, October 30. Safranyik, L. and A. Carroll. 2006. The biology and epidemiology of the mountain pine beetle in Lodgepole Pine Forests in Western Canada. In The Mountain Pine Beetle a Synthesis of Biology, Management and Impacts on Lodgepole Pine, edited by L. Safranyik and B. Wilson, pp. 67–94. Victoria, BC: Natural Resources Canada, Pacific Forestry Centre. Schluter, A. 2007. Institutional change in the forestry sector-the explanatory potential of New Institutional Economics. Forest Policy and Economics 9: 1090–9. Solecki, W. and S. Michaels. 1994. Looking through the postdisaster policy window. Environmental Management 18 (4): 587–95. Stirling, J. 2002. Beetle boss. Logging and Sawmilling Journal. www.forestnet.com/archives/ April_02/spotlight.htm (accessed April 2007). t’Hart, P. and R. Boin. 2001. Between crisis and normalcy: The long shadow of post crisis politics. In Managing Crises: Threats, Dilemmas, Opportunities, edited by U. Rosenthal, A. Boin and L. Comfort, pp. 28–46. Springfield, Ill: Charles C. Thomas. Taylor, S., A. Carroll, R. Alfaro and L. Safranyik. 2006. Forest, climate and mountain pine beetle outbreak dynamics in western Canada. In The Mountain Pine Beetle a Synthesis of Biology, Management and Impacts on Lodgepole Pine, edited by L. Safranyik and B. Wilson, pp. 67–94. Victoria, BC: Natural Resources Canada, Pacific Forestry Centre.
INTRODUCTION Opportunities to create major policy change in forestry policy are uncommon, in part due to the multiplicity of values and outputs associated with forests, along with a diverse set of Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 55 (2007) 459–470 459
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stakeholders, that make the questions of how forests are managed and what they should be managed for, complex and difficult ones. Byron (2006) identified three triggers for change in forest policies: implementation failures arising from ineffective institutions or incorrect assumptions; changes in social priorities reflecting changes in values; and new opportunities in how to utilize the forest resource. In Canada, calls for significant forest policy change have been widespread and increasing in the past two decades as changing public expectations about how the forest should be utilized have resulted in a shift in emphasis toward social and environmental objectives relative to the historic focus on economic objectives (Luckert 2005). However, the unique nature of the forest institutions in Canada makes change even more difficult than in other countries (Haley and Nelson 2007). Provinces across Canada have chosen to develop their forest resource through long-term agreements under which private firms assume obligations in exchange for the rights to harvest the public timber resource. Firms are likely to resist the introduction of new policies if they impose additional costs, and government has historically been reluctant to act absent sufficient industry support. Yet at the same time, given enough urgency, policy makers can and do choose to introduce far-reaching policy changes even if not all stakeholders fully acquiesce (Kamieniecki 2000). Given the widespread calls for new policies, how then might such a system respond when a crisis occurs? Might it trigger substantial policy change? The next section discusses several different approaches to considering how policy change occurs in the face of crisis. I then describe the research method, and turn to an examination of how government responded. I show how the crisis opened a policy window but also how the nature of the crisis, combined by the existing institutional framework, largely circumscribed the policy response. Policy Windows and Crises In considering how policy makers address issues, researchers from different fields have used Kingdon’s model of agenda-setting to describe how issues formally move onto government agendas (Howlett 1998). In the model, policy entrepreneurs inside and outside of government take advantage of policy windows that open up that can lead to policy change and new policy development. Policy windows are created when three different process streams—political, policies, and problems—converge to create the greatest opportunity for policy change.1 What opens the policy window can vary: it may be institutionalized events, such as elections that happen with predictability, or unexpected occurrences, such as an airliner crash, that serve as focusing events that can then lead to the streams converging. Kingdon suggests that there are two main types of window: a “political” window, where an election or change in public concern opens the window; and a “problem” window, where an issue or problem captures government attention (Kingdon 1984). Kingdon (1984) also describes why policy windows close: if participants feel that the problem has been addressed; if they do not achieve any results; if the crisis is short-lived; or if new participants decide that the issue no longer warrants attention or there is no solution to the problem and its political prominence fades. Michaels et al (2006) argue that sudden, exceptional experiences that lead to harm or expose the prospect for great devastation serve as focusing events that can open policy windows. t’Hart and Boin (2001) suggest that the nature of the crisis cannot only determine whether or not a window opens but also contribute to it closing: while the severity of the disruption created by the crisis may spur action, if the end is indeterminate or the scale appears overwhelming the policy
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window can close without any new substantive policies developed as any efforts appear futile. Solecki and Michaels (1994), in an analysis of how different regional planning organizations responded to two types of natural disasters (an earthquake and hurricane), found that in those events policy windows did not appear to open. Organizational Responses to Crises Another area of research has been in exploring how a crisis influences decision making within organizations and at a political level. How quickly each crisis arrives, and the different degrees of threat, urgency, and uncertainty all influence both the organizational and political response. The sense of urgency and threat are especially important as they are more likely to attract public attention and mobilize political will and hence the resources that are brought to bear in addressing the problem. Solecki and Michaels (1994) noted that even where windows did open, they did not necessarily result in the development of new policies or change in objectives, results supported by other researchers examining earthquake and flood hazard management (Burby and French 1985; Alesh and Petak 1986). Instead, the organizational and political structures in place are important determinants in influencing policy development. Solecki and Michaels (1994) suggest that three organizational factors are key in turning such events into policy windows that can be exploited: first, a comprehensive view of the issues (rather than a narrow focus on selected aspects); second; an organization that is flexible and empowered to respond in a substantive fashion; and third, the presence of a policy entrepreneur to champion new policies. In some cases, the policy response may be conditional on the presence of the crisis; policies that were viewed as restrictive and relaxed during the crisis may be reinstated when the crisis passes. t’Hart and Boin (2001) note that the decision to “terminate” a crisis is often a political decision to “end” or at least lower the political importance of the issues that it raised as new issues emerge (regardless of whether the consequences persist). Therefore, while a crisis may provide the basis for change, organizational and political factors may support or impede policy development. Indeed, t’Hart and Boin (2001) emphasize that a little-studied aspect of crisis is the opportunity it may create for policy reform through relaxing key institutional constraints. Determinants of Institutional Change Institutional economics considers more broadly how institutions (which covers not only the organizations themselves but also the “rules” and legislation that provide the governance framework) operate and how they might affect policy development (North 1990). Luckert (2005) notes that the main approach has been through property rights theory that examines the link between how rights are constructed and their influence on firm and agent behavior. Policy analysis then considers how different configurations of rights lead to different outcomes and the distributional impact of changes in benefits streams associated with alternative policies. Luckert (1991), in a case study of forest tenures in British Columbia, argues that the effect of any changes in rights or obligations had to be taken into account in designing new policies as these change the incentives firms face and hence their behavior. He emphasizes that particular attention has to be paid to whether or not the effect of such polices may lead to the elimination of any economic benefits to the firm from harvesting.
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Ideology also plays a role in institutional change, as it explains the mental model of how individuals evaluate the world and provides the basis for their normative judgments that are important aspects to public policy making (Schluter 2007). In their study of forest policy changes in Europe, Kissling-Naf and Bisang (2001) identify where changes in the political regime paved the way for more substantive changes in forest policies in Eastern European countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. However, they also note that it is more difficult to introduce more fundamental reforms, especially in regard to the introduction of a rights-based approach where none existed before (Kissling-Naf and Bisang 2001). Research Method The assessment of the policy response to Mountain Pine Beetle is based in part on interviews with both industry participants and government officials on the effectiveness of the different measures implemented by government and how well they achieved their objectives. This follows the triangulation or convergence method as used by Jick (1979) where multiple viewpoints are considered, along with external data, to give more confidence in the research results. This approach is used to evaluate organizational responses where qualitative analysis is an integral part of the research (Meyer 1982). Solecki and Michaels (1994) and Michaels et al (2006) used a similar approach. In this research, a series of semistructured interviews were conducted with firm and industry association representatives, along with key government policy makers. A total of 20 interviews were conducted. In each interview, several standardized questions were asked in regard to the nature of the crisis and an assessment of the policy response that happened and its effectiveness along with how the interviewee’s particular organization had responded. Additional data from press releases, action plans prepared by the government, along with secondary sources, such as newspaper clippings, were used to provide corroboration. Assessing the Policy Response There are then three aspects to the event that are important in explaining the policies that were developed in response to the outbreak. First, how was the crisis framed and perceived by the different organizations that were involved in policy development? Second, did the crisis result in a policy window opening, and if it did, how long did it remain open? And third, how did the institutional setting impact the policies that were adopted? Did it facilitate or circumscribe certain policy options? Before doing so, however, I describe the event itself, the institutional arrangements governing forest policy, and then the policy response. The Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic Insect infestations are part of the natural cycle in forests, and indeed British Columbia has experienced Mountain Pine Beetle outbreaks before, the most recent being one in the West Central part of the Interior in the 1980s. In such an outbreak, as populations expanded in an area, tree mortality would increase and the infestation would start to expand in an area until cold winters would interrupt the cycle as it would lead to increased beetle mortality and populations would fall to low endemic levels. In fact, from an ecological viewpoint, researchers do not necessarily view the current infestation as a crisis, as outbreaks are part
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Figure 1. Volume of mature timber killed by the Mountain Pine Beetle (millions of m3 )
of the natural cycle (Taylor et al 2006). However the scale of the current epidemic is much greater because of past fire suppression and climate change (Safranyik and Carroll 2006). Figure 1 illustrates the volumes of mature timber killed by the beetle and the dramatic expansion in the past five years. This has raised concerns about the possible impact of losing large proportions of forest cover and its effects on habitat, hydrological functioning, and increased risk of wildfire (Natural Resources Canada 2005). However, the Provincial government has primarily framed the epidemic in terms of the impact it will have on timber supply (Pedersen 2003) and the crisis is therefore now being largely defined in terms of the socioeconomic consequences that will follow from reduced harvest levels in the future that in some areas may fall by 50% or more from preepidemic levels. The Institutional Setting A key area of forest policy making in British Columbia is around those policies that govern the allocation and management of the forest resource in those areas. These are primarily done through long-term tenure agreements in which the provincial government grants access to the crown forest resource to private firms in exchange for undertaking investment in developing the resource. While firms enter into and hold these agreements for the financial benefits that accrue from harvesting the timber and converting it, they not only assume an obligation to pay for the timber but must also assume obligations in regard to meeting social and environmental objectives set by the provincial government. These objectives range from the provision of employment in local communities as well as providing opportunities for public participation in local management decisions to the maintenance of biodiversity and wildlife habitat, and long-term enhancement of the forest resource. The implementation of these objectives in the management of the resource are then carried out by the firms through their development of harvesting plans (which incorporate these different objectives) which determine what and where they will harvest as well as in their responsibility to carry out reforestation following the harvest. Indeed, while the province can offer new licenses that direct the license holder
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into certain areas or timber types, they have no such power over existing replaceable licenses that are largely held by the firms that hold the processing capacity. Therefore, the government has to rely in large part on establishing the right incentives if it wishes firms to carry out certain activities or achieve desired outcomes as it cannot directly mandate firms directly to do so. This institutional framework in which responsibility is delegated to private firms to carry out public objectives therefore serves as the key mechanism through which any changes in objectives and therefore management policies must then be implemented.2 The Policy Response Both the provincial and federal government have responded to the outbreak although the British Columbia government is the only one to develop specific forest policies given its jurisdiction over the forest resources. The federal government has contributed funding for assistance and research.3 The main policy approaches taken by the provincial government have been in redeploying and increasing harvesting activity by firms operating in the affected area. Interviewees identified two distinct phases where new polices were introduced and subsequently modified; the first, a control phase, was aimed at stemming the spread of the beetle and having firms shift their effort from harvesting healthy green timber to infested trees in areas where the outbreak was occurring. In the second, a salvage phase, the policy focus shifted to increasing harvest levels to utilize the dead and dying trees. Currently, most of the harvesting effort is directed toward salvage activities, although there are smaller areas on the edge of the epidemic where there are still some control efforts being undertaken. Policy changes were introduced in two key areas, notably timber pricing and allocation mechanisms. During the control phase, the government recognized that in order to have firms shift their harvesting activity away from healthy, green wood to beetle-infested trees, that it would need to make the changes cost neutral from a company perspective (British Columbia Ministry of Forests 2001). The most efficient way to do this was through the timber pricing or stumpage system. As efforts were directed toward harvesting small areas of infested trees that were more distant and in nontraditional operating areas, this led to the development early on of special salvage rates based on the patch size as well as haul allowances that allowed for timber to go to more distant mills (as the stumpage system was based on pricing timber to the closest mill site). During the salvage phase, the special rates and haul allowances were either dropped or modified. Instead, more significant changes were made to the timber pricing system itself (although these were not fully implemented until 2006) (British Columbia Ministry of Forests 2006). Historically there had been little differentiation within the system itself for log quality; timber was either deemed to be a green sawlog with no distinction for quality or size; dead timber sold for a nominal amount and was excluded from the determination of harvest levels. Two changes were then introduced: first, log grades were introduced such that dead sawlog quality material was no longer sold at the statutory minimum; and second, that volume would now count against a licensee’s annual cutting rights. However, the more fundamental change was in terms of the timber pricing system itself. Previously it had consisted of a complex administrative system where the rates depended on product prices indices; the new system was one based on market transactions that would take into account the decline in values associated with beetle-killed timber.
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The government also moved to increase harvest levels in order to capture as much value from the timber as it could before it became uneconomic to utilize. The results of the uplifts associated with the Mountain Pine Beetle were significant; the overall increases compared to previous levels of Annual Allowable Cut in the area affected were 60% or more. Here the government chose to make the additional timber volumes available through short-term volume-based agreements known as Nonreplaceable Forest Licenses (NRFLs), as well as expanding the volumes available through the government’s timber sales program (which had been recently restructured). These NRFLs were awarded using three different methods: competitive sales in which the highest bidder paid a lump sum plus ongoing stumpage payments; direct awards in which they were directly allocated to new license holders; and by basing the award on commitments to build new non–lumberprocessing capacity. The Changing Nature of the Crisis and Policy Windows Although the beetle epidemic can be traced to outbreaks that started in the early 1990s, the first formal policy responses did not take place until 2001. Interviewees suggested that the delayed response was largely due to the fact that it was first treated as a local problem and that the outbreak would run its normal course and be brought to a halt by a cold winter event, as it had in the past. However, as the infested area continued to spread over the next several years, it raised concern within the broader region and local government and company officials collaborated to press their concerns through the industrial association representing firms in the region. The organization embarked upon an effort in 2000 to increase public awareness in order to mobilize political action. Indeed, the interviews suggested that these efforts contributed to raising the profile of the outbreak that, combined with the increasing scale of the infestation, helped make it a problem that had to be addressed. At the same time there was also a change in the political stream. The newly elected Liberal government in 2000 had chosen to pursue a more market-based strategy and appeared more predisposed toward taking more immediate actions to protect and recover the economic values associated with the forest resource than the previous government. The government had also been contemplating changes in its timber pricing policies for some time and was also being pressed politically to make changes in its timber allocation policies.4 Together, these two streams led to a policy window that opened in 2000 that lasted for several years and contributed to the policy changes. Perceptions of how to address the crisis also influenced the policy response. Initially, in the control phase, policy makers and others believed the appropriate approach was to treat the outbreak as one would a fire, attacking hot spots (localized concentrations of beetles) through harvesting activities that in turn control and eventually suppress the outbreak. Over time, as the infestation continued to grow despite the measures that had been implemented, decision makers’ perspective of the epidemic changed from a problem that could be controlled to adapting to a crisis that was inevitable.5 The policy focus has therefore shifted to extracting as much economic value from beetle-killed trees as possible and how to mitigate the reduction in timber supply that will happen in 10 years’ time and last for several decades. However, it is also apparent that the policy window has closed even though a number of stakeholders (namely firms and communities) felt that the policies developed do not deal with the full socioeconomic consequences of the epidemic, especially the predicted
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disruption in timber supply and its impact on the industry and employment and by extension on forest-dependent communities in the area. In this case the window closed, not because the epidemic went away (if anything, it expanded even more quickly), but because the sense of political urgency started to evaporate. Industry interviewees felt that government had started to take a more fatalistic view that little could be done as the epidemic progressed and that the focus was now only on how much timber could be harvested before it lost all economic value. From their perspective, government had reverted to a more “business as usual” approach and was less willing to explore alternative approaches or develop new policies to address issues raised by the epidemic, especially the longer-term consequences of the epidemic. From a government perspective, officials felt that while initially there had been a shared sense of commitment and responsibility to address the problems raised by the outbreak, over time the industry had shifted into more of a negotiating position in regard to seeking policy changes that would benefit themselves and that were not consistent with government objectives, instead seeking to maximize short-term economic returns through harvesting the highest-valued timber possible. From a broader political perspective, public interest outside of the affected communities waned after the announcement of action plans and funding commitments that offered the promise of resolving the issues associated with the epidemic (although this was not a sentiment shared in those communities). There also did not appear to be any policy entrepreneurs pushing for overall change for the system; instead, there was only the effort to push for changes around timber pricing.6 The Institutional Limitations to Policy Change While the Mountain Pine Beetle crisis did spur policy change in the areas of timber pricing and allocation, the degree of change differed, resulting in more substantive policy reform in terms of pricing but only incremental changes in terms of allocation. Several government officials noted that a part of the policy-making process in British Columbia is the consultative process government goes through in making policy changes with industry, a fact noted by other observers (Kamieniecki 2000). Interviews confirmed that timber pricing is one of the key variables influencing firm behavior and also one of the most contentious areas of policy change. Policy makers had wanted to introduce changes to the timber pricing system for a number of years but industry resistance to change had precluded their adoption. However, as the volume of dead sawlogs started increasing, combined with the realization that in future the existing timber pricing system would not adequately address the changing quality of the timber resource, firms acquiesced to making such changes although they continue to express reservations about how well the newly introduced system reflects current costs and values. In this case the epidemic contributed to helping overcome previous institutional constraints. The more incremental policy changes in terms of allocation reflect the fact that these are more fundamental changes to the system and therefore elicit even greater industry resistance. Industry did not resist the introduction of NRFLs in part because it did not lead to any changes in their existing rights and, indeed, it simply meant that more timber volume was being made available to be processed through their facilities. Indeed, as the government decided to award a significant portion to First Nations in an effort to address aboriginal concerns over treaty rights, this also helped relieve some short-term political pressure in terms of allocation policies.7 Yet government and industry officials also noted
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that by allocating such licenses, even if they were short-term and nonreplaceable, the government had also created new claims on the resource at the same time the future availability was going to fall, heightening potential political conflict. In this case, there was not a willingness to make more fundamental changes to the tenure system itself, despite the fact that changing resource values will make it even more difficult to achieve the traditional economic, environmental, and social objectives. Indeed, as the public continues to demand greater weight be given noneconomic objectives, while politicians and communities continue to express worry about the effect of reduced employment and mill closings on forest-dependent communities, it can be expected that this pressure will intensify as both the quantity of timber available decreases and the value of that timber declines. The conflict between different objectives will only be heightened (McGarrity and Hoberg 2005). Yet at the same time the policy response also revealed how difficult it is to establish new objectives. A number of interviewees felt that although the policy focus in terms of salvage clearly emphasized economic objectives, there was no clear goal in the policies that had been introduced: they were unsure as to whether the goal was to maximize shortterm timber revenue by targeting recently attacked trees; maximize long-term revenue by salvaging as many trees as possible before they lost in value (requiring harvesting trees that were in a further stage of attack); or trying to maximize the long-term timber supply regardless of the economic costs associated in doing so. Here preexisting paradigms in terms of forest management (such as an emphasis on maintaining and maximizing predictable levels of harvest), combined with the political difficulty of introducing changes in objectives (where the political will is lacking absent a public consensus) help explain the lack of more substantive policy response. Perhaps the more fundamental question is what role the government should play in developing policy responses for the post-beetle world. The full effects of the reduced timber supply is expected to materialize in 10 or more years’ time, which offers individuals and firms time to make their own decisions as to how they want to respond. Market adjustment is an alternative to potentially costly and perhaps unsuccessful efforts to maintain the timber supply or offset the community impacts with other programs that are ultimately not economically justified. Given that falldown has been recognized as an inevitable part of industry transition across Canada, the effects of the Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic should be discussed within this framework and consideration should be given to the limitations of what government can do. More generally the long-term timber supply planning approach in predicting future timber supply can lead to expectations that government has greater control over future events than it actually does.8 In fact, government policy efforts to craft some long-term response may have perverse incentives as individuals and communities (rather than initiating actions that make sense from their own economic circumstances) lobby for relief even as their economic fortunes decline.9 CONCLUSIONS While it was clear that the crisis did trigger some policy reform, that reform was limited. The most substantive changes were around the timber pricing system, which had been a longstanding policy goal of the government. Industry had resisted the implementation of these changes over concerns on their overall costs and the uncertainty as to how such systems would work but the epidemic helped overcome this resistance, not only because
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it was apparent that the system had to change, but also indirectly as the increased timber volumes that were being made available reduced some of the risk associated with shortterm timber availability (firms could reasonably assume that sufficient timber would be available at competitive prices). This is perhaps unsurprising; at least in the short-term, there was little need for the system itself to change, as it simply required expanding to handle higher volumes of timber and the existing system is oriented around trying to generate as much timber volume as possible. Indeed, the additional timber volumes satisfied short-term political demands while not resulting in any fundamental changes in allocation as these rights were of limited duration.10 However provincial governments have yet to consider how well suited the existing system is to address the full consequences of the epidemic, especially when the availability of timber (and the quality of the remaining timber) start to decline significantly. Indeed the questions posed by the epidemic are likely to increasingly face Crown forest managers across Canada in the future as climate change and associated changing environmental conditions across Canada increase the risk of drought, wildfires, and even the mountain pine beetle spreading into the boreal forest (it has already entered Alberta). Responding to these issues requires consideration of how well adapted existing systems based on even, predictable timber flows are to such disruptive events. It is to the credit of policy makers that they do recognize that adapting to these changing circumstances will require a change in policies and indeed these changes may need to be much deeper and transformative than has been the case in the past (Betts 2006). Yet at the same time the limited response in British Columbia underscores the difficulty of change and how briefly the window stays open and how limited change may be when the consequences are in the future, more remote, and appear inevitable. NOTES 1
The political stream consists of the characteristics of the political process (ideology, election cycles, structure of legislative bodies), while the problems stream consists of the characteristic of the issues that arise and the policy stream consists of the development of policy solutions (Howlett 1998). 2 Given the predominance of publicly owned land in British Columbia (94%), this means that the majority of the timber harvest—typically in excess of 85% or more—is coming from public lands. 3 The Federal government has promised $1 billion while the provincial government has made commitments of close to $500 million (British Columbia Ministry of Forests 2005). 4 Indeed the provincial government in 2003 introduced a broad set of forest policy reforms covering the entire province (Niquidet et al 2006). 5 Indeed, it is possible that such measures may have been effective a few years earlier when beetle populations were lower. However, given how rapidly populations can expand in the epidemic phase (doubling each year), the effort required at this stage to suppress populations may no longer have been feasible. 6 The provincial government also introduced what could be considered a policy champion within the organization by creating a position called the “Beetle Boss” within the Ministry of Forests in 2001 (Stirling 2002). The idea of a Beetle Boss was modeled on the idea of a fire boss—a local decision maker empowered to draw upon whatever resources were required to suppress a fire. However the purpose of the Beetle Boss was simply to provide a focal point for the policy responses and he did not have the authority to make any policy changes, thereby limiting the effectiveness of this response. The one area in which he had any authority was during the control phase, the ability to designate areas Emergency Mountain Pine Beetle management zones. This permitted the use of the special timber pricing allowances as well as the use of streamlined regulations that expedited
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harvesting approvals. Following the control phase, the role has changed to one of providing more coordination within the ministry in response to the different issues raised and the Beetle Boss does not enjoy any special powers under the salvage phase. 7 While industry officials did not disagree with the general approach, they felt that this had caused a short-term disruption in the timber supply as some of these volumes were being delayed in entering the market. This delay was having a twofold effect: first, the impact on overall timber availability within localized areas; and second, the subsequent deterioration in quality that would reduce the amount of revenue that could be recovered in the long term. 8 “Such alterations have taken place under the guise of rational planning and created an illusion of human capacity to impose not only order on the environment but also to alter the environment to conform to human will” (Ingram 2001, p. 298) in referring to large-scale water development in arid areas. 9 This is not to suggest that there is no role for government. Rather it would be in developing transition strategies for individuals and communities rather than maintaining the belief that the system as a whole can be expected to sustain current levels of economic outputs while simultaneously meeting all of the other expectations. 10 The increased harvest levels provided a relatively painless way for politicians to meet political commitments to First Nations and communities more generally that followed from the policy changes in 2003 avoided the political cost of additional redistribution of cutting rights away from existing licensees that may otherwise have been required. As well the increase in timber supply has had the expected effect of leading to lower log prices; at least from a short-term perspective this made the overall market-based tenure changes introduced several years earlier more palatable to industry (where they had a portion of their cutting rights removed).
REFERENCES Alesh, D. and W. J. Petak. 1986. The Politics and Economics of Earthquake Hazard Mitigation: Unreinforced Masonry Buildings in Southern California. Boulder, Colorado: Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado. Betts, J. 2006. Jim Snetsinger’s poisoned chalice. Canadian Silviculture. February; p. 18. British Columbia Ministry of Forests. 2001. West Central B.C. Mountain Pine Beetle Action Plan 2001. http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/mountain pine beetle/actionplan/2001/actionplan.htm (accessed November 17, 2006). British Columbia Ministry of Forests. 2005. British Columbia’s Mountain Pine Beetle Action Plan 2005–2010. http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/mountain pine beetle/actionplan/2005/ (accessed November 17, 2006). British Columbia Ministry of Forests. 2006. British Columbia’s Mountain Pine Beetle Action Plan 2006–2011. http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/mountain pine beetle/ (accessed November 17, 2006). Burby, R. and S. French. 1985. Flood Plain Land Use Management: A National Assessment. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Byron, N. 2006. Challenges in defining, implementing and renewing forest policies. Unasyslva 57 (223): 10–15. Also available online at http://www.fao.org.docrep/008/a0532e/A0532e03.htm Haley, D. and H. Nelson. 2007. Has the time come to rethink Canada’s crown forest tenure systems? The Forestry Chronicle. In press. Howlett, M. 1998. Predictable and unpredictable policy windows: Institutional and exogenous correlates of Canadian federal agenda-setting. Canadian Journal of Political Science 31 (3): 495– 524. Ingram, H. 2001. Water and the globalizing economy. In Managing Crises: Threats, Dilemmas, Opportunities, edited by U. Rosenthal, A. Boin and L. Comfort, pp. 297–306. Springfield, Ill: Charles C. Thomas.
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