The Statistics of Canada

Co-management institutional arrangements have an important role in creating conditions for social learning and adaptation in a rapidly changing Arctic environment, although how that works in practice has not been clearly articulated. This paper draws on three co-management cases from the Canadian Arctic to examine the role of knowledge co-production as an institutional trigger or mechanism to enable learning and adapting. Experience with knowledge co-production across the three cases is variable but outcomes illustrate how co-management actors are learning to learn through uncertainty and environmental change, or learning to be adaptive. Policy implications of this analysis are highlighted and include the importance of a long-term commitment to institution building, an enabling policy environment to sustain difficult social processes associated with knowledge co-production, and the value of diverse modes of communication, deliberation and social interaction.

Co-management and the co-production of knowledge: Learning to adapt in Canada's Arctic

Why do some community-based natural resource management strategies perform better than others? Commons theorists have approached this question by developing institutional design principles to address collective choice situations, while other analysts have critiqued the underlying assumptions of community-based resource management. However, efforts to enhance community-based natural resource management performance also require an analysis of exogenous and endogenous variables that influence how social actors not only act collectively but do so in ways that respond to changing circumstances, foster learning, and build capacity for management adaptation. Drawing on examples from northern Canada and Southeast Asia, this article examines the relationship among adaptive capacity, community-based resource management performance, and the socio-institutional determinants of collective action, such as technical, financial, and legal constraints, and complex issues of politics, scale, knowledge, community and culture. An emphasis on adaptive capacity responds to a conceptual weakness in community-based natural resource management and highlights an emerging research and policy discourse that builds upon static design principles and the contested concepts in current management practice.

Adaptive Capacity and Community-Based Natural Resource Management

The First Nations of Canada have been active over the past three decades in negotiating natural resources co-management arrangements that would give them greater involvement in decision- making processes that are closer to their values and worldviews. These values and worldviews are part of the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) that First Nations possess about the land; to reach agreements to the satisfaction of First Nations, appropriate ways to involve TEK in decision-making processes must be designed. Through a review of the literature on TEK, I identified six "faces" of TEK, i.e., factual observations, management systems, past and current land uses, ethics and values, culture and identity, and cosmology, as well as the particular challenges and opportunities that each face poses to the co-management of natural resources.

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The Six Faces of Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Challenges and Opportunities for Canadian Co-Management Arrangements

Over the past decade research examining the human dimensions of climatic change in the Arctic has expanded significantly and has become the dominant framework through which the relations between northern peoples and climatic change are understood by scholars, policy makers, political leaders, and the media. This paper critically examines the assumptions, exclusions, and orientations that characterize this broad literature, and suggests revising and expanding the terms upon which it is carried out. It focuses in particular on the exclusion of colonialism from the study of human vulnerability and adaptation to climatic change, the framing of Indigenous peoples and communities in terms of the local and the traditional, and the ways in which efforts to improve the lives of northern Indigenous peoples risk perpetuating colonial relations. The paper argues that these exclusions and orientations lead scholars to systematically overlook the immense importance of resource extraction and shipping as human dimensions of climatic change in the Canadian Arctic, and it examines the implications of such oversights.

Securing Indigenous politics: A critique of the vulnerability and adaptation approach to the human dimensions of climate change in the Canadian Arctic

This paper analyzes how traditional knowledge (TK) is used by two of the co-management and regulatory boards established under the comprehensive land-claim agreements in Canada’s territorial North: the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board (NWMB) and the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board (MVEIRB). A comparison of the defining characteristics of Western “Weberian” bureaucracy, which sets the framework within which these and other boards operate, and central tenets of traditional northern Aboriginal culture highlights the oftentimes stark incompatibilities between what amount to different worldviews. Both boards are shown to have made substantial and sincere efforts at incorporating TK into their practices. The NWMB, with its wildlife-focused mandate, is better able to accommodate TK in its work than is the MVEIRB, which deals with complex legal regulatory issues. Both, however, are limited in their capacity to fully incorporate TK into their operations by the exigencies of the modern bureaucratic state.

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Cultures in Collision: Traditional Knowledge and Euro-Canadian Governance Processes in Northern Land-Claim Boards

Apres une introduction sur la geographie, la demographie et l'economie du Nunavut, les AA. retracent de maniere synthetique son histoire et les caracteristiques principales des revendications territoriales des Inuit. Ils examinent ensuite en detail le systeme politique et de gouvernement, notamment du point de vue de la relation entre la societe et l'Etat. Deux aspects essentiels sont abordes : le controle local des processus economiques et politiques ; la prise en compte de la specificite culturelle des Inuit. Finalement, ils decrivent les premiers developpements de la vie politique, economique et sociale apres l'etablissement du Nunavut en avril 1999. Les AA. se proposent ainsi de rendre compte de l'economie politique du Nunavut, afin d'en reveler les conditions de possibilite et les significations pour l'avenir.

Nunavut : Inuit self-determination through a land claim and public government ?

Treaty federalism in North America encompasses not only governance implications of the historic treaties signed with Aboriginal peoples, but also the modern-day treaties known as “comprehensive land claim agreements.” This article explores how treaty federalism is realized in Northern Canada through claims-mandated joint government-Aboriginal boards dealing with wildlife management, land-use planning, and environmental protection. These boards, existing at the intersection of the three orders of government-national, federal/territorial, and Aboriginal—are found to be unique governance institutions, with substantial independence from government. They have significantly enhanced Aboriginal peoples' influence over land, wildlife, and resource decisions, but the extent to which they bring Aboriginal culture and worldviews to bear in decision-making remains an open question. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

Treaty Federalism in Northern Canada: Aboriginal-Government Land Claims Boards

Contents Tables Foreword Acknowledgments 1. The Scope and Criteria for the Audit 2. Cabinet Government in Canada: An Executive Summary 3. The First Minister As Autocrat? 4. Public Participation in Cabinet Processes? 5. Democracy through Cabinet Structure and Process? 6. Democracy in the Elected Dictatorship? Discussion Questions Appendix: Sources of Audit Information Additional Reading Works Cited Index

Cabinets And First Ministers

The settling of comprehensive land claims across Canada’s territorial North has brought about substantial changes in governance. Prominent among these has been the establishment of numerous regulatory and co-management boards dealing with land, wildlife, and environmental issues. These boards were explicitly designed to bring significant aboriginal influence to bear in key land and wildlife decisions. To examine whether the boards have enhanced aboriginal participation and influence in these decision-making processes, factors such as the number and influence of aboriginal board members, the extent of board powers, the independence (financial and otherwise) of the boards, and the boards’ willingness and capacity to incorporate traditional knowledge into their operations are considered. Overall, the evidence supports the conclusion that the land-claim boards represent an important vehicle for substantially enhanced aboriginal involvement in and influence over government decisions affecting the wildlife and environment of traditional aboriginal lands.

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Graham White

Papers

Cultures in Collision: Traditional Knowledge and Euro-Canadian Governance Processes in Northern Land-Claim Boards

Nunavut : Inuit self-determination through a land claim and public government ?

Treaty Federalism in Northern Canada: Aboriginal-Government Land Claims Boards

Cabinets And First Ministers

"Not the Almighty": Evaluating Aboriginal Influence in Northern Land-Claim Boards