Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist (35 page)

And that wasn’t the only problem. Even before we had our first meeting, the newspapers were full of expose-style articles about the new initiative, especially about the fact that Burson-Marsteller had been hired as the public relations advisor. Much was made of allegations Burson had advised various notorious and nefarious polluters, military dictatorships, and other bad actors in the past. In particular the media alleged that the firm had given counsel to the Argentinean military junta during the time 30,000 people disappeared, many of them having been thrown out of helicopters into the sea. It turned out Burson had been retained by Argentina’s Ministry of the Economy to advise them on how to attract more foreign investment. One of the key recommendations Burson offered was that it would be easier to attract investors if the killing stopped. This detail was lost on the left-wing media types who continued with their feeding frenzy despite the facts. Ironically our public relations advisor had become our worst public relations problem before we even sat down.

When we did get together in June of 1991 it was to a pretty rocky start. Jack Munro’s style was somewhat heavy-handed for some of the recruits. He was fond of saying that we weren’t going to operate by Robert’s Rules, we were working under Jack’s Rules. He was a fairly benevolent dictator, a bit of a diamond in the rough, something one might expect from a man who had worked his way up from being a blacksmith in a railyard to becoming the leader of one of Canada’s biggest workers’ unions. It didn’t take too many meetings until we got used to Jack’s tough-talking yet jovial nature.

Early on some of us felt that the citizen’s board needed to be independent and not just window dressing controlled by Burson and the forest companies. In this I found an ally in Dan Johnston, an experienced young lawyer who specialized in mediation and understood how to structure organizations. We agreed that the Forest Alliance should become a formal nonprofit organization, constituted under the BC Society Act, rather than remaining an ad hoc committee. In other words, we took control of our destiny, insisting we direct our own budget and policy. After all we had been assembled to help the forest industry and we wouldn’t be much use if it were obvious we had no authority or independence. At first this rankled some of the CEOs and Burson folks, but in the end it proved to be the right model. The companies deposited their financial contributions into our bank account and we decided what to do with them. With an annual operating budget of about $2 million, we managed to accomplish a great deal in the following years.

We were immediately faced with some difficult issues. Partly due to the public’s dissatisfaction with the forest industry, the probusiness government was defeated in 1991 elections by the socialist New Democratic Party. The party pledged to crack down on the corporations just as we were getting up and running. In particular the new government planned to enact legislation to control forestry practices. The forest companies opposed a legislated Forest Practices Code, arguing that it should be voluntary. Our first useful piece of advice to the companies was that they should accept the idea of a legislated code and they should become actively involved in providing input as to what it required of them. The public viewed the industry too negatively to accept that the companies would do the right thing voluntarily. The companies took our advice and we began the process of defining sustainable forestry. We had begun to help the industry to get out in front of the environmental agenda.

Many people in the forest industry believed they had a public relations problem; if only they could explain the situation to the uninformed citizens everything would be put right. We told them categorically, “It’s not what you’re saying that’s the problem, it’s what you’re doing.” In other words this isn’t a communications problem, it’s a performance problem. The public simply didn’t like the way the forests were being managed; in particular, it didn’t accept vast clearcuts from one mountaintop to another. For me this was an opportunity to help do what I knew was needed, to bring forest practices out of the old ways into a style that recognized sustainability, biodiversity, and environmental values. It was like Greenpeace all over again, only this time my old colleagues were on the other side. That’s because Greenpeace and their allies were fundamentally against industrial forestry, believing in some kind of ecoforestry that didn’t involve cutting many, or any, trees. Certainly not enough to provide housing, furniture, printing paper, packaging, and sanitation for everyone. I felt I was finally finding the balance.

Another key issue in the early 1990s was the proposal to increase the amount of land, forested land in particular, which was permanently protected as parks and wilderness. A movement had developed, led by the Valhalla Wilderness Society, and supported by the Parks Branch of the government, to double the protected area of the province from the existing 6 percent to the Brundtland Commission’s recommended 12 percent, which was triple the 4 percent protected globally at the time. This would result in a considerable loss for the forest industry because much of the area proposed for new parks was commercially valuable forest land. Predictably the companies opposed the proposal. We convinced them otherwise.

Our reasoning was quite clear. The 6 percent of the province originally set aside for parks and wilderness was largely what the environmental community referred to as “rocks and ice.” Proportionally little commercially valuable forested land was included and the existing protected area was certainly not representative of the many and varied ecosystems in the province. This was understandable, as the term ecosystem didn’t exist in the early 1900s when these parks were created, mainly for their scenic splendor rather than anything to do with ecology or biodiversity. Back then it simply didn’t make sense to “protect” land that had economic potential. How times change.

We were able to convince the forestry companies that doubling the area of parks and wilderness was a good idea for two reasons. First, even though it would mean a one-time loss for the forest industry it would be a good thing for the province in general to have a world-class protected area system for tourism and future generations. Second, rather than kicking and screaming through what might be an inevitable process it made sense for the industry to agree to the concept of doubling the parks because they might then get some say in which areas would be protected and which would remain available for forestry. They agreed with us and now we were really out in front of the agenda. The next 10 years would see the Forest Alliance effectively help the industry become a more progressive element in British Columbia society.

We had succeeded in helping the forest industry to engage with the government and the public on the two most important issues, forest practices and protected areas. Many of the companies now began to play active roles, assigning their chief foresters to participate in the Forest Alliance and to work with government agencies to define sustainable forestry and to delineate new areas for parks and wilderness. By the mid-1990s the Forest Practices Code was enacted and the process of doubling the parks was well under way. By 2000 British Columbia could boast of having one of the best and most representative system of parks and wilderness areas in the world. This was done with a lot less pain to the forest industry than if it had remained opposed to moving forward. There was certainly a reduction in employment due to the loss of land base but much of this was due to mechanization, a factor that has had an impact in all industries as new technologies make it possible to produce more with less labor. In the balance we helped to cushion the social and economic blows while assisting with some desirable, and inevitable, environmental advances.

None of this came easily. The entire time we were trying to steer the forest industry onto a more sustainable path they were being assailed by local, national, and international environmental groups accusing them of crimes against the planet. Apparently the people who used wood to build their homes, print their books and magazines, and wipe their bottoms were not to blame. It was the loggers and most particularly the multinational forest corporations who employed them who were the real evil-doers, according to activist theory. So our job in the Forest Alliance was not just to help bring the industry into the environmental age. We had to explain to members of the public that they were the ones using the forest products, and that trees and the wood they produce are the most abundant renewable materials on this earth. Nothing else even comes close. Ironically, the fact that trees are living organisms leads people to have sympathy for them while they have no such feelings for nonrenewable resources like steel, plastic, and concrete. This emotional aspect of the anti-forestry movement is not easily approached with logical arguments. And one wonders why the general public doesn’t have the same emotional reaction to the plants and animals we kill for food every day as it does to trees. Never mind the fact that most of our food is grown where forests have been cleared for farming. If there is an enemy of trees, it is farmers, not foresters. No one promised a logical situation and we certainly weren’t faced with one.

While our job description was to help industry improve its environmental performance, this proved relatively easy compared to the challenge of convincing the public that forestry is a worthy occupation in the first place. Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Rainforest Action Network, and even the usually more temperate World Wildlife Fund gave the impression that forestry was a morally questionable activity. The same tone continues to this day and has been responsible for environmental groups receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, donations from individuals and foundations that believe there is something fundamentally wrong with cutting trees while they continue to consume products made from wood every day. Forestry provides one of the most perfect examples of hypocritical political correctness, preaching against using the most abundant renewable resource while at the same time telling people to use more renewable resources. There is no shortage of examples on this point.

Despite the vociferous and sometimes angry campaign against forestry, the Forest Alliance proved to be a very successful model. I believe it succeeded because it promoted a reasonable balance among the competing interests: more protected areas, better forest practices, economic development for families and communities, and the utilization and renewal of an ecosystem with a miraculous range of uses, from wildlife to lumber to paper to fuelwood to carbon fixation to cleansing air and water. In the end the single-use, narrow visions of forests as being either only for industry or only for preservation lost out to an approach that recognized the multifaceted nature of sustainability. When the Forest Alliance was founded only 34 percent of British Columbians agreed that the forests were being properly managed. When we wound down 10 years later that figure was 75 percent, a strong testament to the power of the round table, consensus-based model of working toward win-win solutions. Winston Churchill said, “democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.” For me, the round table, multi-stakeholder, consensus process is not perfect, just better than all the other approaches to resolving environmental and resource-use conflicts.

While I continued with the Forest Alliance until its winding down 2001, the B.C. Round Table on the Environment and the Economy did not fare so well. When the socialist New Democratic Party swept the provincial election in 1991, less than two years after we were commissioned, many of us on the round table assumed the new government would support a citizen’s group working on sustainability and the environment. This was not to be the case.

The environmental movement had a strong contingent within the New Democrats. They didn’t like the round table because they thought it was a place were the environment was being compromised on the altar of the economy and other unsavory considerations. The socialist politicians had the incorrect impression that the round table was a creature of the previous center-right government when it was in fact part of an international movement. The bureaucrats didn’t like the round table because it knew too much and presumed to give policy advice to politicians. Bureaucrats easily forget that their job is to carry out policy, not to make it. The new government slowly killed us, eventually sending two cabinet ministers dressed in oversized suits to announce our demise. It was a classic case of small minds destroying something much larger than themselves. I think they secretly feared us; I know I fear them and the repression of intellect and reason they represent.

With the round table behind me and the BC Carbon Project wrapping up, my time was now largely taken up with work for the Forest Alliance. I was appointed chair of the Sustainable Forestry Committee, which was charged with developing Principles of Sustainable Forestry. I had an excellent group of practicing foresters and academics on my committee, including forest ecologist Hamish Kimmins, who had been the head of my PhD thesis committee over 20 years earlier. Our task was to create a set of principles, covering all aspects of forestry and the environment, which could be signed in public by the CEOs. It would then be our job to receive regular reports on progress toward compliance with the principles. It took six months of intensive meetings to arrive at the following set of principles:

Environment

Roads should not be built where there is a risk of severe soil erosion. Where roads are built they must be up to standards that will ensure long-term erosion control. Temporary roads should be removed to provide more space for growing trees. Harvesting methods, such as skyline cable systems and helicopter logging, that reduce the area disturbed by roads should be used wherever practical.