The flux of trust: caribou co-management in Northern Canada.

Abstract

There is a presumption that the primary goal of creating alternative resource management systems is to increase the efficiency of the management decisions made. However, changing the rules of resource management leads to institutional uncertainty, and such instability is an integral part of developing alternative management systems. In the case of barren ground caribou management, these rule changes include adding the voices of resource users to decision-making, in particular, the marginalized voices of aboriginal caribou-hunting communities. Trust-building is an important process in the development of new management institutions in such cross-cultural situations. Trust develops in conditions where the multiple perspectives of diverse stakeholders are addressed, so that the information for management decisions is clear, accountable and legitimate to all parties. The trust put in the knowledge of linked and dynamic social and ecological conditions changes through time. In this paper the fluctuating trust put in the knowledge of caribou ecology and behaviour is examined with the aid of panarchy thinking and common property theory. This analysis is grounded in the relationship between barren ground caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and people in the Dene community of Lutsel K'e on the eastern arm of Great Slave Lake, in Canada's Northwest Territories.

On suppose que l'objectif premier qui sous-tend la creation de systemes alternatifs de gestion des ressources est l'amelioration de l'efficacite des decisions. Pourtant, les modifications des regles de gestion fragilisent les institutions, et cette instabilite fait partie integrante de la creation de systemes alternatifs de gestion. Dans le cas de la gestion du caribou des toundras, on compte parmi ces changements l'ajout du point de vue des utilisateurs de la ressource dans les prises de decisions, en particulier celui des collectivites autochtones qui en font la chasse. Etablir la confiance est un processus important dans la creation de nouvelles institutions de gestion dans un contexte interculturel. La confiance s'etablit lorsque les perspectives des divers intervenants sont prises en compte, afin que l'information menant a des decisions soit claire, responsable et legitime pour tous. La confiance dans la connaissance des conditions sociales et ecologiques dynamiques et interreliees se modifie dans le temps. Cet article se sert de la pensee panarchique et des theories sur la propriete commune pour examiner les fluctuations de la confiance dans les connaissances sur l'ecologie et le comportement du caribou, en particulier dans le cadre des relations entre les caribous des toundras (Rangifer tarandus) et les peuples de la communaute dene de Lutsel K'e, dans le bras est du Grand lac des Esclaves, dans les Territoires du Nord-Ouest.

Key words:

Caribou, co-management, panarchy, trust, learning

Introduction

Traditional aboriginal caribou-hunting peoples in northern Canada moved seasonally on the land until the late 1950s and this relationship is thousands of years old (Gordon 1996). Archaeological evidence in the Yukon shows that the relationship between humans and caribou in some parts of the Canadian North is up to 25 000 years old (Cinq-Mars 2001). The distribution of many Dene peoples anticipated the changing migratory movements of the barren ground caribou, especially before settlement. A recent economic valuation of just two of these barren ground herds (the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq herds) found that the domestic hunt of the more than 13 000 aboriginal peoples living on the ranges of these herds has an equivalent economic value of 11.5 million dollars or the cost of replacing the caribou harvest with store bought meat in 2001 (Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board 2002). The range of each of these herds extends at least 1000 km from north to south and more than 500 km from west to east. A single animal may travel as many as 4 000 km in a year. Currently, more than three million barren ground caribou range the North American North. Human-caribou systems may be thought of as complex adaptive systems--as systems that display unpredictable dynamics, shifting stabilities and require multi-scale thinking. Complex systems problems are difficult to define (Ludwig 2001), requiring multiple perspectives and collective learning (Gunderson and Holling 2002).

Caribou co-management represents joint management scenarios between traditional aboriginal caribou hunters, government managers and biologists and subsequently provides a potentially suitable approach for such complex systems. In addition, many aboriginal communities want their knowledge and perspectives to be included in decision-making without compromising their aboriginal rights to self-determination. Yet these rights can be undermined when aboriginal organizations cooperate with state organizations that may not recognize these rights. The drivers and incentives for these diverse parties to pursue joint management include the mutual need for: 1) mechanisms to make sure that the benefits and costs of maintaining management systems fall to the same parties, 2) monitoring systems that are accountable to and/or carried out by resource users (Ostrom et al. 1994), 3) the re-working of the ties between aboriginal and Canadian governance structures (Kendrick forthcoming).

Trust among co-management parties plays a key role in creating space for innovation and mutual education to occur. Without it, joint management can mask multiple perspectives rather than benefit from the opportunities they offer for collective and innovative learning. Such social learning is possible when diverse ways of knowing are represented at the management table--and when the table provides the conditions for its emergence. The conditions for trust, however, are continually changing as processes for generating knowledge, sharing knowledge and learning about linked human-caribou systems change. The space for trust to develop is connected to the ability of joint management institutions (working rules) to adapt to the changing knowledge of the diverse parties involved in caribou co-management. The objective of this paper is to describe how changing trust levels affect rule changes in co-management systems.

Changes in technology and land use create a dynamic tension in the trust levels that aboriginal caribou hunters, biologists and managers have in their own observations--and in the exchange of their knowledge with each other. Fluctuating trust in the legitimacy of different kinds of knowledge plays a major role in the ability of co-management organizations to take decisive management actions. There is never a clear linear transition in caribou co-management activities from collecting information about caribou populations, to negotiating, monitoring and enforcing rules for caribou harvesting activities. These phases are better pictured as circular and simultaneous. The trust involved in negotiating this dance is a dynamic and on-going process, it is not an end in itself.

Changing trust catalyzes changes in the institutions (rule sets) that guide management decision-making. In the case of co-management involving aboriginal and non-aboriginal governance systems, mechanisms of change must recognize how knowledge, stakeholder representation, and resource rights are held individually and collectively. Trust is therefore a multi-faceted mechanism, bridging gaps between aboriginal and Canadian governance and knowledge systems.

Adapting Ostrom's (1994) insights to the case of caribou co-management, the work involved in creating viable management systems should include:

1. the repatriation of lost information,

2. the creation of rules about the ways in which information may be shared, and

3. the guarantee that all those involved in making decisions about a resource are aware of and trust the information used to make these decisions.

The efforts of aboriginal communities to document traditional knowledge and revitalize culturally relevant institutions amid tremendous forces of colonization are efforts to regain "lost" or marginalized information about caribou-human systems. The creation of rules for sharing information that avoid the co-optation of aboriginal knowledge systems by mainstream society also plays a role in revitalization efforts (e.g. community-designed research protocols). This paper concentrates on the third challenge: creating viable resource management systems; making sure that all co-management decision-makers are not only aware of the information used to make decisions, but have trust in the information. It is argued that this trust is not concrete unless co-management parties find a way to share with each other the means of acquiring and interpreting knowledge about the environment, possibly driven by the co-production of knowledge through innovative ecological monitoring programs. It should be emphasized here that further references to monitoring in this paper refer primarily to observations that document the state of barren ground caribou populations and their habitat and not to the monitoring of harvesting activities.

This paper first describes information exchange in formalized co-management organizations and how uncertain information is handled. It is then argued that community-based monitoring is central to any fundamental knowledge exchange between aboriginal caribou-hunting communities and government agencies. Finally, the paper discusses mechanisms for social learning in caribou co-management arrangements through the co-production of knowledge and the mutual recognition of knowledge limitations.

Theoretical Background