Decision-making 2: Dilemmas in Designing Forest Practices Rules

1. Decision-making 2: Dilemmas in Designing Forest Practices Rules www.BrentLaycock.com

2. Today’s Agenda • Updated themes • Decision-making theories Case: 6% solution • policy design • Tools - instrument choice • Configuration • Forest Practices • Code • Results-based regulation • FRPA • Conclusion

3. Instrument Configuration • formality - guidelines or rules? • transparency • simplicity • congruence: rule varies to match problem

4. Riparian Protection

5. design challenge:accommodating spatial diversity Objective: congruent, but simple and clear • Vary the rules to account for different circumstances (Prescriptive congruence) • Rely on professional judgment (Professional delegation) • Rely on local plans (Geographical delegation)

6. design challenge:accommodating spatial diversity

7. Today’s Agenda • Updated themes • Decision-making theories Case: 6% solution • policy design • Tools - instrument choice • Configuration • Forest Practices • Code • Results-based regulation • FRPA • Conclusion

8. BC Forest Practices: Evolution • pre-1994 – guidelines and plans • 1995-2004 – Forest Practices Code (“the Code”) • mix of planning and practice regulations • considered overly costly, complex, and prescriptive by industry • considered weak and inadequate by environmentalists • very high compliance

9. New Era Agenda - 2001 • Election promise: Streamline the Forest Practices Code to establish a workable, results-based Code, with tough penalties for non-compliance • Cut the forestry regulatory burden by one-third within three years, without compromising environmental standards.

10. “results-based code” 2004 • Forest Range and Practices Act (2002) • Simplified planning structure • eliminated approval of site level plans • increased reliance on “forest stewardship plans” to propose results and strategies to meet specified government objectives • Major design tension: • government’s desire to have strong default standards • industry’s desire for maximum flexibility Hoberg – Policy Framework

11. Why they stopped calling it “the code” Pirates’ Code: • must be a pirate for the pirates’ code to apply • the code is more what you call guidelines than actual rules

12. Result-based regulation - concept • aka Performance-based regulation • Focus on objective • Leave means up to industry • 3 components: • Characterize desired outcomes • Specify performance standards • Measure performance

13. Result-based regulation – challenges in forestry • For many forest values, we lack the specific knowledge to design measureable performance standards Standards that are sufficiently specific to be clear and measurable but still provide flexibility in choice of practice

14. FRPA solution • Rather than government-provided performance standards, require plans to include “results or strategies” • If operators prefer not to develop their own, they choose government “default standards”

15. FRPA Design • Objectives established by government • Some performance standards • Forest Stewardship Plan prepared by lisencee • measurable results and strategies to meet objectives • may choose government “defaults” • reviewed and approved by government • Auditing and Compliance • Professional Reliance

16. Objectives for 11 values In regulation, not statute Soils Resource features Timber including forest health Recreation resources Fish Visual Quality Wildlife Cultural Heritage Resources Biodiversity Forage Water “without unduly reducing the supply of timber from British Columbia's forests” FRPA Regulations - Objectiveshttp://www.for.gov.bc.ca/tasb/legsregs/frpa/frparegs/frparegs.htm

17. Example FPRA Objective: Riparian • The objective set by government for water, fish, wildlife and biodiversity within riparian areas is, without unduly reducing the supply of timber from British Columbia's forests, to conserve, at the landscape level, the water quality, fish habitat, wildlife habitat and biodiversity associated with those riparian areas.

18. FRPA Regulations http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/tasb/legsregs/frpa/frparegs/frparegs.htm • Performance based regulation for fish passage: • Activities must not have a material adverse effect on fish passage in a fish stream

19. FRPA: Forest Stewardship Plans • 5 year plan • Map of development activities proposed • Results and strategies to address 11 FRPA values • Or reliance on defaults • Reviewed and approved by government • Legal document, basis for enforcement

20. FPRA “defaults” = Code rules

21. FRPA Implementation • Sample plan from Tolko • Forest Practices Board Report 2006 • FSPs inscrutable and not effective for public review • Industry is not committing itself to enforceable or measureable results, preferring instead • Default requirements • Strategies without measure outcomes Leah Malkinson Thesis

22. Conclusion • Design dilemmas – optimal specificity • Tradeoffs between congruence, simplicity, transparency • Due to measureability problems, FRPA not as results-based as envisioned

23. New Themes • A major challenge for forest policy making is designing policies to accommodate spatial diversity • Forest practices regulation in BC relies on a combination of vague performance objectives, practice requirements, and planning requirements. Measurability challenges have limited efforts to develop a results-based framework