Small Sawmills Persevere While the Majors Close: Evaluating Resilience and Desirable Timber Allocation in British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

ABSTRACT. We compared the resilience to economic shocks-such as the downturn of the U.S. housing market-of commodity sawmills, which tend to be large, and value-added specialty sawmills, which tend to be small or medium in size, that are located in one region of the province of British Columbia, Canada, as measured by their average days in operation over the last decade and during the 2007-2009 recession. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative measures, we then examined three behavioral characteristics contributing to their different degrees of resilience: flexibility, diversity, and orientation to place. We found that the specialty mills had greater resilience over the decade because they (a) contributed more jobs per volume of wood consumed and produced, (b) had greater flexibility to operate further below their capacity, (c) produced more diverse primary and secondary (value-added) wood products, (d) targeted more diverse markets, and (e) did more log sorting and trading in logs of different species with other specialty mills and with local commodity mills, with whom they acted as a resilient cluster. Although all these activities resulted in more logs flowing toward their highest value use, we found that the specialty mills lacked a secure and adequate timber supply, while the major timber tenures held by the commodity mills went largely unused during the downturn. This finding suggests that, in addition to contributing to resilience within the forest products sector, more access to timber tenure by the specialty mills, or having a greater portion of timber on the open market, would result in more value being produced from publicly owned timber.

Understanding Adaptive Capacity in Forest Governance: Editorial

“…International developments on sustainable forest management through certification as a market-based governance system are illustrated by Keskitalo et al (2009) and Clark and Kozar (2011). Lundmark et al (2010) and Pinkerton and Benner (2013) illustrate the structural changes that may impact forestry and employment in forest areas. Elbakidze et al (2010), Moen and Keskitalo (2010), Beier (2011), and Pinkerton and Benner (2013) then illustrate the role of both of large-scale competitors and higher governance levels, in particular with a focus on the national level, for forest management in a variety of cases.…”

“…Lundmark et al (2010) and Pinkerton and Benner (2013) illustrate the structural changes that may impact forestry and employment in forest areas. Elbakidze et al (2010), Moen and Keskitalo (2010), Beier (2011), and Pinkerton and Benner (2013) then illustrate the role of both of large-scale competitors and higher governance levels, in particular with a focus on the national level, for forest management in a variety of cases. Finally, Wellstead et al (2013) argues that vulnerability assessments need to do more to take into account different governance and policy-oriented factors, akin to those treated in the previous articles in this special feature.…”

“…A focus on organization that highlights economic consequences is found in the contribution 'Small Sawmills Keep Trucking While the Majors Close: Evaluating Resilience and Desirable Timber Allocation in British Columbia, Canada' (Pinkerton and Benner 2013). This article reviews the resilience to economic shock depending on flexibility, diversity, and location, among small and large scale sawmills in British Columbia.…”

“…These concepts often also focus on social organization such as participation, and how cooperation between multiple interests can support natural resource management. Adaptive comanagement and adaptive governance concepts are also often utilized in relation to resilience frameworks, which may conceive of adaptations as actions that may increase resilience, http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss4/art45/ or view adaptive capacity and resilience as related (for instance, Pinkerton and Benner 2013). The variation in how adaptive capacity and related concepts are understood is, however, substantial (see for instance Plummer et al 2012 on the concept of adaptive comanagement).…”

“…A further complexity is the changing structural context of forest use, highlighted for instance by Lundmark et al (2010) and Pinkerton and Benner (2013). In the Fennoscandian context, rural population is to an increasing extent an aging population.…”