The links between industrial, community, and ecological sustainability: A forestry case study

According to Harold Innis, Canada's economic history has been based on the discovery of natural resources, consequent community formation to facilitat e their extraction, resource depletion, and finally, community disappearanc e. This model links industrial change and development in the resource secto r with both community and ecological outcomes but neglects detailed explora tion of the industry/ecosystem linkage. The purpose of this paper is to ada pt the ecological footprint concept in order to make the ecological impact of economic and technological change in a Canadian resource industry (sawmi lling) explicit. This investigation utilizes a large cohort of sawmill work ers gathered in 14 British Columbia (B.C.) mills, a study that measured the ecological footprint in several of these mills, and a labor adjustment stu dy conducted by Statistics Canada to explore the links between technologica l change and downsizing in this resource industry and both community and ec ological sustainability. The ecological footprint concept is adapted for us e in a resource-extracting industry. This allows moving the estimation of t he ecological footprint from its usual place,an urban consuming population, to the site of natural capital transformation (the sawmill) thereby linkin g the costs and benefits of this transformation with site or region-specifi c ecosystem exploitation. Results demonstrate that the recession of the ear ly 1980s eliminated over 40% of the sawmill workforce and stimulated increa sed replacement of labor by capital, thus increasing productivity and the e cological footprint of sawmills. The new technical infrastructure now in pl ace in most sawmills is accelerating the pace of forest ecosystem drawdown while at the same time producing less economic benefit for the local commun ity. Adaptation of the ecological footprint for use at the site of the tran sformation of natural capital makes these trade-offs more specific.