2015 Conference

Full Presentation Panel

Walking our Talk: Decisionmaking for Sustainability

Dr. Susan Kask

It is one thing to proclaim sustainability as a goal in an organization’s, or business’ mission and vision, but taking actions to do so either in strategic planning or in day-to-day operations is yet another.  Walking our talk in sustainability poses many challenges due to the requirement that we must make trade-offs among the three dimensions of sustainability: economic, environmental, and social.  Making these choices involves multiple goals, often many stakeholders, uncertainty, and limited budgets.  Many organizations have pursued the low hanging fruit by adopting various environmental programs, yet find themselves still facing the more challenging needs of both environmental problems such as climate change and social problems such a living wages still looming on the horizon and sometimes right at their doorstep.  The options available are complex and require making tough trade-offs.  Successful management of this complexity is rooted in the process of sustainability, the focus of this paper.   A values based decision process is presented using multi-criteria decision-making methods coupled with systems modeling.  Several case studies are presented highlighting the benefits and challenges such an approach provides for adopters.

Understanding Change in Forest Certification Standards, at National and International Levels

Devin Judge-Lord

Sustainable forestry certification standards are constantly changing. This paper focuses on documenting and comparing changes in certification standards developed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), and Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).  It builds upon and updates an analytical framework and data first developed in a 2008 review of forest certification programs to assess change over time. We use content analysis to evaluate both comprehensiveness (how many key issues are addressed) and level of prescriptiveness (use of mandatory and/or substantive thresholds) in forest managment. It finds that all standards assessed are increasing in both comprehensiveness and prescriptiness of social and environmental requirements, but that, while broad principles of sustainable forest managment are converging at the international level, the specific requrements for certification in the US are diverging. Previous theories do not explain or predict this "upward diverging" pattern in US forestry certification. Thus, the paper sets fourth four hypotheses that could explain this new pattern of change and suggests research to test these hypotheses.

Financialization tastes like Spotted Owls: Understanding divestment in Northern California's redwood timber industry

Sarah Carvill

American environmental politics has long been bedeviled by the popular belief that protecting ecosystems inevitably leads to the devastation of rural economies. The conflict over logging on public land in the Pacific Northwest after the listing of the Northern Spotted Owl in 1990 bolstered the association between increasing regulation and the decline of natural resource industries such as timber harvesting. However, research demonstrates that mining, logging, and ranching are still of great economic importance in the Western U.S., despite changing values and concomitant shifts in public policy (Beyers and Nelson 2000; Winkler et al. 2007). Studies have also shown that job losses in primary industries that are commonly attributed to environmental regulation may be better explained by processes that are endogenous to industry or operating at extra-regional scales (Freudenburg et al. 1998). In general, how and why natural resource development persists or declines in particular places remains poorly understood (Beyers and Nelson 2000; Robbins et al. 2009).

This paper analyzes the causes of industry change in the commercial redwood forests of California’s North Coast. Between 1998 and 2008, three of the four major landowners in the region abandoned redwood timbering: Two national forest products firms divested all of their forested acreage, mills, and distribution infrastructure in the redwood belt; a third firm had its assets transferred to new owners in bankruptcy court. These changes coincided with high profile direct actions against old growth logging in the region, as well as increased regulation under the Endangered Species Act, California’s Forest Practice Rules, and state and federal water quality statutes. The timing of these events led many observers to assume that direct targeting by activists and regulatory tightening had subverted the economic rationale for redwood timber harvesting— an impression that at least one of the three firms intentionally cultivated in its public statements. Industry-focused analysis reveals little support for this conclusion, however. I draw on archival materials, interview data, and other case study-based literature to connect the financialization of the forest products sector to ownership change in the redwood region.