Northern CommunitiesTransitioning to Resilience

Hi folks, Takes awhile to get used to this technology and figure out how it works, but I think I'm getting the hang of it...

You can see my brief bio in my profile. I am wearing two hats for this project: my researcher hat as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Forestry and the Forest Environment (soon to be Natural Resources Management) at Lakehead University, with graduate student Lynn Palmer working on community forestry, and my Northern Ontario Sustainable Communities Partnership co-chair hat. These two efforts focus on my community forestry, northern development and Aboriginal involvement in forest management interests. You can check out more about NOSCP at www.gcfi.net/noscp. Here's what we said in the NOSCP letter of support for the project:

"Members of the Northern Ontario Sustainable Communities Partnership (NOSCP) have reviewed the Community-University Research Alliance proposal titled 'Northern Communities Transitioning to Resilience: Reworking Policies and Practices towards the Post-Carbon Era.' We agree in principle with the objectives of the proposal and are willing to participate in the development of a formal application as a partner.

NOSCP is a coalition which came together in November 2006 in response to the forest industry crisis in northern Ontario. Participants are a range of individuals and organizations, including northern municipalities, non-governmental organizations, academics and Aboriginal organizations. NOSCP sees the current crisis in the industry as an opportunity to re-evaluate the structure of the current forest sector in Ontario, especially forest tenures (see our website at www.gcfi.net/noscp ).

In 2007, NOSCP developed a Northern Ontario Community Forest Charter that uses broad principles to provoke debate and change. The Charter is a call to individuals, communities, government and industry to develop new ways of sustainably managing our northern forests, new ways of licensing access to timber and non-timber resources and new forest product development to benefit northern communities. We have made a commitment in the Charter to, among other things, recognize, respect and help to resolve Aboriginal and treaty rights by working with Aboriginal communities. The development of the Charter was followed by a two-day workshop in March 2009 that involved an unprecedented number of First Nations communities and may have been the first time that so many First Nations and non First Nations peoples have met in the same room to discuss community forestry. About 120 delegates participated, representing 21 First Nations communities, local municipalities, Local Citizens Committees, students and academics, environmental non-governmental organizations, the forest industry and unions. Over a dozen funders supported the workshop.

We would like to work with the Northern Communities project to research best practices and effective governance of community forests, capacity-building for local communities to assume control of local forests and means to influence policy change to support community forests. The research proposed in the Transitioning to Resilience project will inform policy change that we hope will help on the road to northern community sustainability."