Toward a Pluralistic Civic Science?: Assessing Community Forestry

Abstract

Abstract While stakeholder involvement in environmental management is now common, we suggest that stakeholders can contribute to a pluralistic civic science that incorporates local knowledge directly into environmental decision making and research. We consider how insights from feminist scholarship might help us to understand the influence of power relations among our subjects of study and in determining how scientific knowledge is defined and used. We pay particular attention to how knowledge is produced, how participation is constrained, and to what extent community participants and researchers would benefit from critical reflection in their work. We apply these elements to an assessment of a community forestry pilot project in Burns Lake, British Columbia, Canada. Our findings suggest that while local participants have considered community forestry effective, practices have not met the ideals of a pluralistic civic science. We identify some of the reasons for this discrepancy and provide suggestions for future practice. Keywords: communitycommunity-based environmental managementfeminist scholarshipforestrypluralistic civic science Kirsten McIlveen acknowledges the support of the South Side community of Burns Lake, while Maureen Reed acknowledges financial support from the Sustainable Forest Management Network and the team of researchers working on social sustainability. Both authors acknowledge the work of three anonymous reviewers and the (former) editor, Dr. Richard Krannich, for their help in improving the content of this article. We apologize if any errors remain. Notes 1. Civic science has many members in its family, among them civic environmentalism, citizen science, democratic science, people's science, public science, and participatory science. It also has many allies with "community-based" environmental decision-making approaches, including local, traditional, and indigenous knowledge (Berkes Citation1999), political ecology (Peet and Watts Citation1996), comanagement (Reed Citation1995), ecosystem management (Cortner and Moote Citation1999), community-based conservation (Berkes Citation2004), grass-roots environmental management (Weber Citation2000), and public ecology (Robertson and Hull Citation2003). 2. The invisibility of these migrants is in contrast to the high visibility of recent "equity migrants" who may be directly involved in local politics, by "set[ting] up art galleries and hurl[ing] themselves into local politics…and view the aftermath of their activities as a community development success story" (Fortmann and Roe Citation1993, 49). 3. For a more extensive discussion of these ideas, see Reed (Citation2003, 7–9). 4. Burns Lake was at the heart of the mountain pine beetle infestation that affects much of BC's interior forests. This ecological epidemic illustrates factors are at play that are well beyond the control of the local community forest and even the provincial government. 5. This case study was followed up by telephone interviews with local representatives of the remaining nine community forests in the province to help set specific findings into a wider context.