Building Self-Sufficient Communities
Coastal First Nations are working to build self-sufficient communities through sustainable economic development.
This means generating our own sources of revenue so that communities can fund ecosystem-based land and marine management practices to preserve our resources into the future.
Revenue supports sound science, planning, management and staff on the ground to monitor and steward our land and sea.
New 10-year agreements with the BC government now give our member First Nations significantly improved access to ‘forestry tenures’ – an amount of wood we can harvest year after year.
Communities also share in provincial forestry revenues from commercial logging in our Traditional Territories.
Originally negotiated in 2002, these Forest and Range Agreements were the first to:
- give member Nations access to sustainable forest harvesting opportunities
- commit BC to share a portion of provincial forestry revenues
- require BC to consult with our Nations on forestry decisions that might affect cultural interests in our Territories
Sharing Forest Wealth
In 2000, not one Coastal First Nations community had access to harvest trees on our lands.
Forestry tenures were held by logging companies targeting key old growth forests in the Great Bear Rainforest with heavy-handed logging methods. Coastal First Nations communities – largely excluded from resource jobs and opportunities – watched as our Territories were being depleted.
The Forest and Range Agreements opened the door to sustainable commercial forestry for First Nations and gave our communities a say in how forest resources are managed.
