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UVic's
Environmental Law Centre and BCICS: Telling the Story of BC's Forestry
and Fishing Co-ops
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In
the conventional resource extraction industries which have formed
the economic backbone to so many areas of the Province, a controversial
issue is that control of the industries, and hence the fate of the
small towns that depend on them, is held outside of the communities.
Fishing and forestry co-operatives can be a solution to this problem.
In a co-operative, the local community maintains more control over
the management of the fish and forests. Since the continued livelihood
of the local population will likely be dependent on the long-term
operation of forestry and fishing in the area, the harvesting methods
used by the co-operatives are more likely to be sustainable, and
provide more long-term employment.
However, to the uninitiated, forming a co-op in BC can be a confusing
process. A team of students affiliated with the Environmental Law
Centre at the University of Victoria, in partnership with BCICS,
prepared a paper each on the legal and policy frameworks for fishery
and forestry co-operatives, as well as separate handbooks for organising
forestry and fishery co-ops.
The different documents include three case studies of co-operatives
in operation in the province, illustrating some of the difficulties
that forestry and fishery co-ops might face when starting out. The
case studies also suggest possible ways to avoid or deal with many
of the obstacles that cause resource-based co-ops to fail.
Overall, the research and the resulting documents are meant primarily
to be useful to those people who are looking for solutions to economic
and social dilemmas in their communities. As well, the information
from case studies may be interesting for policy makers.
The team working on these projects was led by Aaron Welch. Students
working on the team included Mann Vergan, Tamara Vrecko, Stacey
McCausland, Jesse Gelber, and Celine Berniard.
The Environmental Law Centre is a student-run, non-profit organisation
at UVic, dedicated to research and education on environmental law
issues from a public interest perspective. The ELC can be reached
at 721-8188, or at ELC@uvic.ca, and its website is www.elc.uvic.ca.
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