Rayner, Jeremy. 1996. "Implementing Sustainability in West Coast Forests: CORE and FEMAT as Experiments in Process." Journal of Canadian Studies 31(1): 82-101.

Thesis:

Rayner conducts a comparative case study of two programs aimed at forest ecosystem management, and assesses their relative successes and weaknesses. He concludes that in order to deal effectively with sustainability issues, jurisdictions "must find better ways of integrating science and human values" (p.97).

Summary:

Rayner provides a brief history of the development of the dominant forest management paradigm in British Columbia, and the United States Pacific Northwest. This paradigm, which he calls the multiple-use sustained-yield paradigm, focuses upon how to maximize and sustain a flow of commodity values from public and private forests. However, in recent years, the old paradigm has had its foundations shaken, and an alternative paradigm, the ecosystem management paradigm, has changed the shape of public discourse surrounding forestry. Central to this debate has been the definition of the sustainability problematique -- What is to be sustained, timber production or old growth forest ecosystems? "The key dispute over the last two decades has turned on whether it is either necessary or possible to reproduce the full complexity of structure and function found in the naturally occurring forests of the region in the managed forests that rapidly have been replacing them" (p. ).

On both sides of the debate, there has been a battle for scientific legitimacy through disseminating researchers' ideas in a process of "perception transfer" (Swanson in Rayner, p.84). These shared perceptions of the sustainability problem are what define the sides of the debate in an "advocacy coalition framework" (Sabatier in Rayner, p.84). In Sabatier's view, the multiple-use sustained yield paradigm has functioned much like Kuhn's "normal science," treating contradictions and contrary findings as "anomalies". However, the dominant paradigm was "increasingly at odds with the wider policy community" as environmentalists, independent loggers, unionized workers, and timber-dependent communities came under increasing pressure of productivity gains in an export market. "This was not sustainability as forest workers and their communities understood the term" (p.90). In the early 1990's, the dominant advocacy coalition effectively lost control in both countries (p.91). Government agencies adopted sustainability and ecosystem management as their official policy goals. However, "the inertial effect of existing institutions and policies" has made transition to the paradigm slow going (p.82).

In illustration of this, Rayner describes how the dominant yield-based paradigm has historically played out in the jurisdictions of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, and outlines two current attempts to implement more ecosystem-centered management of forests. He assesses their relative successes and the points where they have been disappointing. The FEMAT approach in the U.S. Pacific Northwest failed to recognize that sustainability is a social problem, and relied too heavily on scientific knowledge. In contrast, the CORE approach in British Columbia focused heavily on public consensus building, to the detriment of scientific input surrounding the requirements for ecological sustainability. Rayner concludes that in order to deal effectively with sustainability issues, jurisdictions must find better ways of integrating scientific knowledge and social-political human values" (p.97).

Keywords: forest ecosystem management, multiple-use sustained yields, social and political values, scientific constraints, paradigm shifts