August 8, 2001
Colleen
Shepherd
BC’s Small-scale cottage industries are
close to the pulse and the heart of its people.
It seems that cultural innovation begins right there at the grass roots
where average people are forced to be creative and diversify in order to
survive. But small-scale innovations go
beyond mere survival, to capture the context, the desires and the values of
BC’s people at this present moment in history.
In a word, they capture our cultural heartbeat.
Recent downward shifts in BC’s large-scale
primary resource sectors has caused exhausted and resource depleted industry
players to finally recognize the economic potential of what is going on at the
more innovative and diversified grass roots level. There is a very real risk that they will
attempt to appropriate the activities away from the cottage industry, learn
about them, specialize in them, and politicize them so as to justifiably
regulate all activities associated with them.
Next will come massive expansion into niche markets in the name of
fiscal responsibility, global efficiency and free trade and the market economy.
In fact, at this present time the
small-scale food and agriculture industry including the organic sector, and the
secondary value-added and specialized processing sectors are at risk of the
above measures as global markets for commodity foods and processed goods become
saturated. The secondary / value-added forest manufacturing and technology
sectors are also at risk of immediate appropriation as high cost commodity mill
operations are shutting down due to shifts in the global production and supply
of wood resulting in decreased access to markets. Add to this poor sector planning which has
resulted in loss of BC’s once competitive edge due to specialization in primary
volume extraction with no forethought of shifting market demands, changing
forest tenure and regulatory policies, inefficient use of technologies, higher
cost of wood and unsustainable economic and ecological practices. This is what’s
left of the profit driven, unsustainable, resource depleted kingdom known as
BC.
In the recent report Technology and the BC
Forest Products Sector, Ernst and Young theoretically discard BC’s once viable
primary forest industry in favor of the secondary value-added sector that has
been laying its foundations just recently in the province. They quickly move in
to boldly proclaim that, “to be globally competitive, BC’s secondary wood
products industry needs to move beyond the ‘cottage industry’ stage of development
and achieve large-scale, long production runs of standardized products for
export markets.” This statement will alarm anyone who is concerned with more
then the bottom line of a multinational corporation’s pocketbook and
shareholder loyalty.
British Columbians’ are witnessing the
insidious proliferation of so-called free market economy values into virtually
every aspect our lives. Appropriation of
our cottage industries not only factors out all potential for building a
sustainable provincial economic infrastructure but also, by virtue of its
monolithic scale negates the value of cultural preservation. In fact it
appropriates BC culture and dumps it into a faceless nameless monoculture
soup …
it’s about as exciting as a vat of well bleached pulp.
The Small-scale BC wood industry is just
now becoming viable thanks to the hard work of local visionaries, and no thanks
to the massive primary forest firms who until now have paid no mind to the
efforts of small mill operators, or specialized craftspeople. The strength and
potential of the industry comes in part from a unique mix of cultural and
geographic identity. The potential
market of our secondary, value-added products is inextricably linked to the land
and people who produce them. To massively
scale up, and regulate BC’s small scale value-added industry would be to strip
it of the very value that had been added.
One can just imagine how tantalizing this
emerging sector has become to an aging and exhausted forest industry facing
eminent demise. As a province in
desperate need of restructuring we need to recognize this danger and plan for
action to protect our cultural resources from appropriation and to keep them
under the management and control of our local communities. At this very present
time recommendations are being made about how large forest firms can develop BC
Forest Sector Value Added Chain Opportunities in order to maximize profits and
expand production by “furthering levels of automation, perhaps robotics
technology, to provide significant increments of value-added per employee.”
(Ernst & Young, 1998) Essentially
this amounts to unsustainable large-scale misuse of cultural knowledge and
human capacity at the expense of our communities who are trying to diversify
and survive.
In close, Ernst & Young claim, “further
manufactured, margin-added technologies can provide better overall profits for
the sector. They can extend the economic
life cycle of BC’s major export commodity products for many decades to
come.” Sure, many decades of
unsustainable mass extraction of timber for commodity markets under the guise
of adding value along with the eminent loss of BC’s cottage industry? No
thanks.
An unofficial critique:
Ernst & Young Forestry Group,
‘Technology and the BC Forest Products Sector’, Summery Document, An
Evaluation of the Impact of technology in the BC Forest Products Sector, Undertaken
on behalf of the Science Council of BC and the BC Forest Products Research
Network Forum, Vancouver BC 1998
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