Identifying indicators of community sustainability in the Robson Valley, British Columbia

Abstract

This paper outlines a method of developing indicators of well-being in small, forest-based communities. It also describes some specific measures of well-being in a particular forest-based community in the Robson Valley Forest District, British Columbia. In this project, we attempted to strike a balance between relying on locally obtained information—collected through workshops, interviews, and a mail survey—and information obtained from the social science literature. We took a broad-based approach toward indicator development by identifying goals and indicators pertaining to the entire region. Our paper explores this theoretical orientation in some detail and then provides an account of the dialogical methods used to identify community-based indicators. Of the six community goals we identified, we discuss “maintaining community capacity” at length by examining the empirical data from five indicators and then drawing some conclusions about the status of community capacity in the Robson Valley.