July/August 2001. Looking North. Welcome PSEEE.

Greening Local Politics

What do athletic shoes and softwood lumber have in common? Each is a product consumed domestically, but increasingly manufactured abroad. This year, the largest remaining domestic manufacturer of athletic shoes shut its factory doors. Converse cited foreign competition with low labor costs to explain the factory closure.

Also this year, major lumber manufacturers Boise Cascade and International Paper announced permanent mill closures in Idaho and Maine. International Paper attributed its Maine mill closures “to market conditions characterized by prices at their lowest level in more than a decade and the impact of lumber imports.”

Canada’s share of the U.S. softwood lumber market increased from 27 percent in 1990 to 37 percent in 1995. Presently, Canada provides about one-third of the softwood lumber consumed in the United States. The increase in Canadian imports has coincided with sharp reductions in lumber produced from U.S. national forests. In essence, claim those who support more national forest logging, the United States has exported its demand for timber across the border to Canada.

Buying imported products can be good for U.S. consumers. Prices are lower because workers get paid less than they do here at home. Quality for the price can be better, as with Japanese electronics and British Columbia coastal Douglas-fir lumber. And environmental restrictions are often fewer, reducing the costs of production. The Cato Institute, a staunch free-trade proponent, says, “Free trade is a favor we do to ourselves. By opening our markets to the best and cheapest goods the world has to offer, we expand consumer choice, we specialize our industries into things we do best, and we intensify the competitive pressures that lead to higher productivity and higher standards of living.”

The recently expired Softwood Lumber Agreement between the United States and Canada, which capped imports of Canadian lumber, increased the cost of a new house by about $1,000. No wonder proponents of free lumber trade include the National Association of Home Builders, Home Depot (the nation’s largest retail lumber dealer) and the National American Indian Housing Council, which builds low-income housing for American Indians. As a result of trade restrictions, U.S. consumers have paid 15 percent more than Canadians for the same lumber.

Some environmental groups have joined forces with U.S. lumber manufacturers to strengthen import restrictions on Canadian softwood lumber. According to the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, based in Bellingham, Washington, “A large percentage of the subsidized lumber imported from Canada comes into the U.S. duty free, exacerbating deforestation, depressing domestic prices and adversely affecting American mills and workers.”

Environmentalists seek to incorporate environmental issues into ongoing U.S. and Canada lumber trade negotiations. If Canada refuses to reform its forest practices to protect endangered species, old-growth forests and salmon streams, then U.S. environmentalists will support tariffs and other trade sanctions on lumber imports from Canada.

On the other side of the border, some First Nations members have aligned themselves with U.S. environmentalists and against the Canadian timber industry. The Cree Nation in Quebec, for example, opposes environmentally destructive logging within its traditional lands, the source of 60 percent of Quebec’s softwood lumber. “It is our belief that our American neighbours do not wish to buy Canadian forest products at the expense of the forest environment or the Cree people,”leaders of the Cree Nation said in a statement to the U.S. trade representative.

To U.S. lumber manufacturers, however, neither the environment nor First Nations rights are the issue. According to the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, Canada’s provincial governments subsidize lumber production by selling publicly owned trees at less than fair market value. Canada’s western provincial governments, which own most of the timber (little western Canada timber is privately owned), sell trees to mills for about one-tenth the price those trees would command in the United States. The sales are noncompetitive; each mill is allocated a geographic territory from which it has exclusive cutting rights. Canada’s logging licenses also require mills to cut and process public timber even when there is little or no market for the lumber.

Can international trade restrictions be used to improve the environmental quality of Canadian forestry? Perhaps. But that’s certainly not the U.S. timber industry’s nor the Bush administration’s primary objective. If trade restrictions are imposed, they will more likely benefit U.S. lumber producers, cost U.S. lumber consumers and have little or no effect on environmental protection.

If there is one lesson activists should have learned in the last thirty years of environmentalism, it is that all politics are local—especially environmental politics. Few U.S. wilderness areas have gained protection without the support of local people and politicians. Canada’s vast publicly owned forests will not be protected without the support of the Canadians who own them.

Canadian Counterpart

British Columbia’s vast public forests, rivers and inland waters have a new defender. With assistance from Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, eight employees of the Ministry of Forests and the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks have created Public Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (PSEEE). Jim Pojar, a forest ecology research scientist with the Ministry of Forests, leads the new group as board president. Pojar is known for his unparalleled knowledge of British Columbia’s plants and ecosystems.

“PSEEE will offer public employees a vital opportunity to go beyond our job descriptions and serve the public’s broad interest in environmental conservation and stewardship,”Pojar said. In addition to employees from British Columbia’s natural resource and environment agencies, PSEEE will welcome citizens as members. “It takes a commitment from everyone with a stake in our natural resources to ensure they are conserved for future generations,”Pojar explained.

Like FSEEE, PSEEE will defend the right of free speech for government employees. “Only with open and honest dialogue can we solve the environmental challenges that face us,”said Len Vanderstar, PSEEE’s vice president and a biologist with the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks.

British Columbia’s environmental ministries have come under criticism in the last year for muzzling their scientists and land managers. Ministry of Environment wildlife biologist Dionys de Leeuw was suspended without pay for writing and circulating for peer review an analysis of grizzly bear mortality rates. Ministry officials censored the report because it concluded that sport hunting of grizzlies, which is permitted in British Columbia, threatened the bear population’s long-term survival. In a vindication for de Leeuw, the outgoing New Democratic Party government suspended grizzly hunting for three years. However, his suspension was not rescinded and the new Liberal government may revisit the grizzly hunting issue.

Members of FSEEE’s staff and board will provide assistance to PSEEE during its start-up, including fundraising help to ensure that PSEEE has the resources it will need to be successful. “Never before have government employees in Canada organized for environmental protection,”said Andy Stahl, FSEEE’s executive director. “These employees have the guts and commitment to make it work; it’s up to FSEEE to ensure that they have the support they’ll need.”

Forest Magazine | FSEEE