Evaluating the effectiveness of citizen participation in public forest planning and management: results from surveys of public advisory committee members in Canada

• Author / Creator

  Nenko, Alemu Sokora

• Forest governance within Canada includes public engagement as an established component of forest resource development and regulation. Public engagement, often through local stakeholder advisory committees, can address conflicts in values and can facilitate decision making under conditions of scientific uncertainty. Such processes are also institutionalized through provincial regulation and third party certification, such as Forest Stewardship Council. Although forest governance institutions in Canada give centre stage to public engagement, research shows that such governance processes often fail to achieve claimed benefits, resulting in disillusionment among stakeholders. Moreover, empirical insights regarding these governance processes are often limited to regional, or case specific insights. In this thesis, I attempt to achieve two complementary goals. In chapter 2, I provide a theory-driven quantitative analysis of factors influencing the effectiveness of public advisory committee (PAC) participation in the Crown forest management in Canada. Drawing on a 2016 national survey of PAC members in Canada (n = 345), I examine committee member perspectives on procedural justice, distributive justice, and social learning are linked to self-reports of committee effectiveness and satisfaction. Controlling for other factors in binary logistic regression analysis, results indicate that procedural justice (fairness of the process) is the most significant factor in committee member expressions of effectiveness and satisfaction. These results lend support to theories of procedural justice as a foundation for enhancing forest governance in Canada. In Chapter 3, given the evolving theory and practice of sustainable forest management (SFM), reflected in Canada through the criteria and indicators of SFM, the second goal of this thesis is examining potential differences between Indigenous and nonindigenous PAC participants regarding their opinions about the success of the PAC process in fulfilling their expectations and their perspectives about forest values. Under the second goal, I have had two district objectives. First, examining opinions of the two groups concerning the success of PAC processes in fulfilling their expectations. Second, statistically testing potential differences between Indigenous and nonindigenous public advisory committee (PAC) members regarding their feelings about different forest values. I have attempted to address this goal by using the 2004 and 2016 national surveys data of PAC members in Canada. I used a Mann-Whitney U test to estimate if there is statistically significant difference between indigenous and nonindigenous PAC members regarding the two objectives (forest values and success of PAC process in fulfilling expectations). My findings from both the 2004 and 2016 surveys indicate that despite the application of PAC based public participation in Crown forest in Canada for almost two decades; there remain statistically significant differences between Indigenous and nonindigenous members regarding their perceptions about different forest values and successes of the PAC process. Compared with nonindigenous PAC members, Indigenous members are less likely to feel that the PAC process is fair, they are not confident in raising their concerns, and are less likely to agree that they are able to influence forest decision-making. Drawing on these findings, I suggest what future research may focus on in order to forward helpful policy implications for the success of PAC process as a dominant form of public participation in forest management in Canada.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Indigenous forest values
  • Public forest management
  • Public participation
  • Distributive justice
  • Procedural justice
  • Social learning

• Graduation date

  Spring 2018

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3D795R86

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.