Notes from Cascadia Workshop

Meeting organized by Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, Local Governance Institute. University of Victoria, April 10 2009.

Victor Konrad, BPRI, WWU – “Approaching the Breaking Point: The Canada-United States Border in the 21st Century”

• Renewed interest in border issues post-Bush, but not a return to pre-Bush notions of “longest undefended border in th world.”
• Continued emphasis on economic and security issues. Issues framed as “problems” – absence of discourse on cooperation.
• Eroded platform of trust between Canada and the U.S. has social and cultural implications for the idea of trans-border relations.
• We need to brand the idea of cross-border interactions. There are distinct borderlands cultures across the Canada/U.S. border – distinct in GBPS, as from Sask/Manitoba – North Dakota, as from Great Lakes, as from Atlantic Canada – New England.
• Is the future a blurring of the sovereign with increased border security (e.g., fences, gates, surveillance).
• Current problems (smuggling, migration) are not new, just re-framed.
• Insecurity re-bordering: paradox of post-modernism (increased wait times to cross border); firearms/drugs interactions; contructing of fences and walls.
• Majority of border is still thin / invisible. Thick points are increasingly thick. Strained borderlands culture.
• Deadline for WHTI – moving target? The idea of an identity card (or biometric passports) are uncontroversial in Europe and hugely controversial in North America.
• Security concerns / perceptions now over-ride and influence all other issues and concerns.
• Impacts:
  • environment: weakening alliances
  • transportation: VANOC chaos
  • tourism: diminished
  • trade: wait times, delays, lost productivity.
• need to re-learn what we know about the border before re-inventing it.

Don Alper, BPRI, WWU – “Environmental Governance in Cascadia: An Analytic Framework”

• Cascadia – BC, western Yukon, Alaska, Washington, Montana.
• centred on shared landscapes
• watersheds and parks/protected areas cross the border – Alaska panhandle, GBPS, Cascade-Okanagan, Columbia Basin
• imagining the environmental region:
  • visioning an ecological region: Callenbach (Ecotopia, 1975), McCloskey (Cascadia, 1995), Robbins (the Northwest as a “state of mind”, 2001), Todd (the “elusive Utopia”, 2008),
  • political-economic-environmental imaginings: Cascadia Project (Seattle – Vancouver corridor), PNWER, GBEI
  • Traditional Indigenous place – Salish Sea (Sarah Singleton?).
• is there a cross-border environmental political culture?
  • policy infiltration / migration / replication across the border – e.g., livable region, sustainability,
  • little evidence of transboundary identity among activists (suspicions of transboundary institutions – New World Order fears) (see Alper and Salazar, 2006).
  • differences in views on conservation goals and social-justice perspectives (social justice more prevalent in Canada)
• approaches to transboundary environmental management:
  • international agreements
    • IJC (generally seen as a Great lakes organization)
    • Pacific Salmon Treaty – generally ignores sustainability issues
    • Columbia River Treaty – tries to balance ecological and industry values
  • sub-national non-binding agreements
    • BC-WA Environment Cooperation Agreement
    • Pacific Coast Collaborative (WA, OR, CA, AK, BC – 2008) – alignment on climate / marine policy agenda.
  • citizen / community-based initiatives
    • watershed improvement districts, water basin organizations (e.g., Okanagan Basin Alliance)
    • NGO alliances (e.g., Rivers Without Borders; Tatshenshini International)
    • Indigenous organizations (e.g., Coast Salish Aboriginal Council)
• modes of transboundary environmental governance in Cascadia
  • crisis / reactive (interest politics focus): e.g., hydro power vs. fisheries;
  • state-centric (government focus)
  • social constructivist (idea focus)
• does the natural beauty of the region undermine efforts at engaging mass-consciousness of the fragile nature of the ecosystem.