Indigenous Rights and Environmental Governance: Lessons from the Great Bear Rainforest ...

In British Columbia, conflicts over First Nations rights to natural resource management have become a common feature of the political landscape. A range of emerging issues — such as private hydroelectric developments, a resurgent mining industry, oil and gas exploration, and proposed pipelines — com...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Low, Margaret, Shaw, Karena
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/bcs.v0i172.2247
https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/article/view/2247
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Summary:In British Columbia, conflicts over First Nations rights to natural resource management have become a common feature of the political landscape. A range of emerging issues — such as private hydroelectric developments, a resurgent mining industry, oil and gas exploration, and proposed pipelines — combine with increasingly robust legal grounds for First Nations rights to suggest that significant challenges to effective regimes of environmental governance loom on the horizon, as does their necessity. This article examines the negotiations that led to the novel forms of environmental governance that are being deployed in the central and north coast of British Columbia, also known as the Great Bear Rainforest. The negotiation processes, which included groundbreaking “government-to-government” negotiations between First Nations and the BC government, signal a significant shift in the way First Nations are involved in land-use decisions in British Columbia. The article considers the character of these negotiations, ... : BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly, No 172: Winter 2011/12 ...