Review of Environmental Governance in Canada: Challenges and Opportunities

The declining role of the state in contemporary environmental governance

In November 2007, the cover of Maclean's magazine featured a picture of Canada's most famous environmentalist, David Suzuki, and a caption that read: 'The remarkable transformation of Saint Suzuki: He used to be a voice in the wilderness – now he works with Walmart. Is he getting smarter, or selling out?' This question is the right one to ask not just of Dr. Suzuki's experiment in corporate partnerships, but of environmental governance in general. Agrawal and Lemos's (2007) review of environmental governance poses this same question. Are we indeed making progress? While such a question invites analysis of many possible foci, the issue that most reviewers of contemporary environmental governance draw attention to is the declining role of the state. For many reviewers of contemporary non-state governance systems, its characterization as a 'necessary response to the failures of traditional state-led environmental management' is problematic. For them, the reluctance of governments to regulate, for example, carbon emissions is not the inevitable result of the 'ineffectual nature of command and control regulations', but rather a political choice. This choice has been labelled as 'neoliberal' in its minimizing of state authority, elevation of market-based approaches to pollution control, and acceptance of private actors as co-designers of good governance. One of the first and most prominent critiques of neoliberal environmental governance in Canada was offered by Prudham (2004) in his review of the May 2000 Walkerton contaminated-water crisis, which resulted in the deaths of seven people and the injuring of many more. For Prudham, the crisis was not the rare product of some unusual circumstances, but rather a 'normal accident' of neoliberalism, which can be expected to manifest in other systems that experience environmental regulatory reforms like those carried out by Ontario's Harris Government in the late 1990s. In the case of Walkerton and the dismantling of public oversight of municipal drinking water, the regulatory reforms were evidently deregulatory in nature. That is, reforms were undertaken which resulted in an adequately-funded state-based system of oversight dismantled, with few if any alternative mechanisms of governance put in place as a substitute. Thankfully, many contemporary environmental governance initiatives are characteristically different from this example. In some cases, novel environmental governance is being adopted to tackle an issue for which conventional regulatory instruments such as performance standards were never established. Undoubtedly, a Memorandum of Understanding with automotive manufacturers that asks them to undertake voluntary improvements in fuel efficiency is a weak governance instrument. However, it was arguably adopted precisely because strong legislation has never existed and industry resistance to such legislation would be high (Lyon and Maxwell, 2003). The same might be said about the rise of programs that seek to attribute monetary value to natural features through the language and practices of 'ecosystem goods and services'. These initiatives are, for some environmentalists, a last resort and obvious compromise, but nevertheless a necessary evil given the failure of governments to protect natural features and rare species on private property. Other criticized, although arguably progressive environmental governance instruments are those that, like an IBA, privilege property rights and the use of contract law to enable the exchange of monies for access to lands and resources. One such instrument is Alaska's Community Development Quota (CDQ) system, examined by Mansfield (2007). The CDQ is a state-led community development program whereby Indigenous community access rights to regional fisheries are expressed as a quota that can be leased to non-Indigenous industrial fish harvesters. For Mansfield (2007), the appropriateness of this exchange is perplexing. While it is problematic in its conversion of historical assess rights to a form of property that can be traded for profit, from a social justice viewpoint, the re-securing of the access rights by Indigenous peoples and their use of it for enrichment it is laudable. Mansfield's (2007) confusion is healthy. The evolution of environmental governance in Canada, as elsewhere, is empowering some and disempowering others, and generating both progressive outcomes and unmitigated disasters. Importantly, any evaluation of a particular evolved form of environmental governance should give regard to the typical outcomes under a conventional form of environmental management. Although admittedly a modest bar, if the outcomes achieved through novel governance mechanisms are evidently progressive relative to those typically generated by more conventional ones, then it matters little if the mechanism is neoliberal. Rather than fall back on ideological rationales that support or challenge particular governance approaches, we should challenge ourselves to think about what approaches, or combination of approaches, can deliver results for issues that have long troubled conventional regulators. If you think you have conceived of a possible solution, be sure to take action. In the world of environmental governance, we can all be actors. In this activity, you are asked to respond to the following questions: Does a future based on less overt environmental management by governments and more environmental governance by multiple actors hold promise? By the way, do you see yourself as one of those actors?