Managing Natural Resources in British Columbia: Markets, Regulations, and Sustainable Development

How must natural resource sectors change to achieve sustainable development in British Columbia? What reforms can be made to 'institutions' in order to assist these changes? What new policy instruments can be introduced? What institutions and instruments are no longer useful? These questions are the topic of hot debate in British Columbia and elsewhere. Managing Natural Resources in British Columbia grapples with these questions and suggests some preliminary answers. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the book brings together leading scholars from the fields of law, economics, forestry, and agricultural economics. This book goes one step further than many earlier studies of sustainable development, which have compared, in principle, the merits of market-based versus regulation-based instruments, and examines these policy instruments, their institutional contexts, and the way in which they are implemented in the various resource sectors in British Columbia. Looking in turn at forestry, fisheries, air quality, and the regulation of energy, the authors consider what policy instruments are most appropriate for fostering sustainable development and which institutions will best implement these policies and sustain them in the years to come. Managing Natural Resources in British Columbia offers an innovative and far-reaching contribution to the debate over sustainability at a time when many individuals are questioning the future of the environment in British Columbia.