Forestopia: A Practical Guide to the New Forest Economy

Here is the layperson's complete guide to the New Forest Economy, in which small- and medium-sized logging companies and mills thrive' in which we nurture our value-added industries instead of selling off our raw materials at too high a volume and too low a price, in which old forests are protected and new ones are planned and cultivated intelligently, in which the company town gives way to the integrated community, in which there are enough jobs and enough trees, in which the Clayoquot crisis and cries of "Brazil of the North" are history.

Best of all, say the authors, the resources for a major change are already in place, from the trees to the mills to the bargaining table. And everyone - even big business and big government - knows it's time for a new approach. At the heart of Forestopia is how we get from here to there: how we can stop the momentum of current high-volume raw lumber sales and make room for smaller, labour-intensive outfits, how the new economy works in the context of the world marketplace, and how we're going to pay for it.

Dr. Michael M'Gonigle is a political economist and environmental lawyer with an extensive background in environmental activism, as a co-founder of Greenpeace International, SmartGrowth BC, Forest Futures (Dogwood Initiative) and as a founding co-director of the Sierra Legal Defense Fund. As Chair of the Board of Greenpeace Canada, he initiated the Greenpeace forest campaign in 1990. Most recently he was a member of the Legal Mechanisms Experts Team devising innovative legal mechanisms for aboriginal and community-based management of British Columbia's Central and North Coasts. At the University of Victoria, he holds the Eco-Research Chair in Environmental Law and Policy, and is cross-appointed between the School of Environmental Studies and the Faculty of Law. In 1994 he co-authored Forestopia: A Practical Guide to the New Forest Economy.