As forests burn in the north, residents of threatened communities are evacuated, thousands of forest workers are without access to their jobs and Quebeckers breathe in smoke like never before, it’s a good time to take a no hindsight, to reflect on our forest management, and more broadly on our lifestyle and our collective choices.
Foresters and biologists have spoken in recent days to call for development to adapt to climate change, taking into account the increased future risks of fires and insect epidemics. Industrial representatives have called for easier harvesting of burned forests, before the residual wood is spoiled by wood-eating insects. That’s great, but there’s more.
You must read or reread the report of the Independent Commission on Woodland and Mountain Caribou, known as the Gélinas Commission1. A few weeks before the forest started to burn, the media alerted us to the fact that the Quebec government was preparing to table a caribou recovery plan without taking into account the point of view of several First Nations communities. . This orientation would aim to preserve jobs in certain communities. That would be a serious mistake.
We cannot manage the forest without protecting its foundations and without listening to what the First Peoples are saying about it. We have a legal and moral obligation to do so.
They do not want to confiscate the territory to prevent us from enjoying its benefits. They talk to us, we have to listen to them. Today’s big fires are loudspeakers screaming at us to listen to them.
It is imperative to stop pitting forest protection against economic development. We must learn to protect more natural forests, while producing more and better where conditions permit, especially in private forests. New Zealand protects 80% of its natural forests and it has a productivity 15 times higher than ours on the 20% of the forests devoted to the production of wood. We must support the evolution of the forest industry and forest management towards sustainable forestry practices and business models.
Engage communities
In Quebec, more than 200 municipalities and nearly 30 First Nations communities live and depend on forest land. We need to involve these communities in planning decisions. The Order of Forest Engineers of Quebec in a recent issue calls for the establishment of the concept of designated forest planner on the territory by which local decision-makers from all backgrounds can contribute effectively to the orientations and especially to the actions of forest management. It is an idea to consider. The local skills of people from these communities will help us to better protect and produce better in these territories.
The forest industry is a supplier of goods and services that society needs more than ever. It provides materials and increasingly renewable energy, substitutes for concrete, steel and petroleum.
The Quebec Strategy for Research and Innovation in Innovation (SQRI2) specifically recommends fostering innovation in the forest industry in order to help it better assume its role as a supplier of bioproducts that can play a key role in an economy. green to replace products with a high carbon footprint. We must take this direction and create more wealth without always cutting down more trees.
From a circular economy perspective, it is imperative to adopt a regulation to prohibit the burial of construction, renovation and demolition wood waste in order to reintroduce it into the composite panel sectors, into bioproducts and bioenergy. It is imperative to put an end to the linear economy which extracts resources, consumes them and throws them away. Landfills are the mines of tomorrow.
The great forest fires of 2023 are not primarily a forestry problem. They are the result of climate change, itself resulting first and foremost from the misuse of fossil fuels. To put an end to it, we must question our North American suburban development model in the metropolitan regions of Montreal and Quebec and in medium-sized cities, to develop local urban planning, focusing on active transportation and collective. Buildings must be constructed of sustainable materials, including wood, buildings heated with renewable energy. We must finally transform our industries to move from extractivist models to circular models of renewable or infinitely recyclable resources. We must learn to create more wealth without ever more exploiting resources.
Is it possible ? The countries of northern Europe are already on this path. As Mark Twain said, “They didn’t know it was impossible, so they did it.” Or as Ferland would say: “If we got down to it!” »
* The author was Dean of the Faculty of Forestry, Geography and Geomatics from 2007 to 2016, Vice-Rector for Studies and Student Affairs and Executive Vice-Rector from 2016 to 2022, Université Laval