Negotiating Air in the Great Bear Rainforest. CO2 Emission Trade in the Context of Resource Use, Conservation and Decolonisation in Canada
Final Report Abstract
This project explores the preconditions, frameworks, effects and cultural meanings of CO2 certificates drawing on the example of the Great Bear Carbon Project on the Canadian Pacific coast. A particular focus is placed on the Heiltsuk Nation and how they, as part of the Coastal First Nations, repeatedly negotiate and define economic relationships and cultural attributions of the environment and resources, as they make political demands vis-á-vis the province of British Columbia and the Canadian federal state in the context of the CO2 reduction project. Traditional trade relations and concepts of exchange play just as important a role as locally specific (non-)human-nature relations and the striving for political self-determination. However, Indigenous perspectives and practices are not to be understood a priori as opposed to those of the state, internationally active corporations or environmental organizations. Examining the project’s history, political embedding and socio-economic effects, it becomes clear that alliances and boundaries are constantly renegotiated. New platforms are creatively found to articulate differences and negotiate joint solutions. Seen through this lens, this study makes an innovative contribution to economic anthropology in a current and forward-looking field. The results of this research project show that CO2 certificates are more than a financial instrument for combating climate change. Rather, forest-based conservation projects, such as in the Great Bear Rainforest, are inextricably linked to local perceptions of, and relationships with, the natural environment and the question of the right to control land and natural resources. In the context of Indigenous British Columbia, these issues are closely linked to the re-assessment of the colonial legacy in the region and, thus, to efforts toward reconciliation and political selfdetermination.
Publications
-
Emissionshandel aus Ethnologischer Perspektive. Treibhausgase als soziale Mittler in globalen Netzen. Studien aus dem Münchener Institut für Ethnologie, 16.
Brill, Saskia
-
Between Science and the Expertise of the Elders In: Kleemann, Katrin; Oomen, Jeroen (Hrsg.): Communicating the Climate: From Knowing Change to Changing Knowledge. RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society; Bd. 4. S. 61-68.
Brill, Saskia
-
Encountering Clams: An Experience of Ancient Knowledge and Present Subsistence. In Environmental History Now. A Platform on Representation, Engagement, and Community, online resource:
Brill, Saskia
-
Writing with Landscape—A Workshop with Laura Watts. In Seeing the Woods. Munich: Rachel Carson Center.
Fonck, Martín; Brill, Saskia et al.
-
‘Political Orders,’ 41st Annual Conference of the Society for Canadian Studies (GKS), 14–16 February 2020, Grainau, Germany. Sociologus, 70(2), 181-184.
Brill, Saskia
-
A story of its own: creating singular gift-commodities for voluntary carbon markets. Journal of Cultural Economy, 14(3), 332-343.
Brill, Saskia
-
The mutability of economic things. Journal of Cultural Economy, 14(3), 271-279.
Braun, Veit; Brill, Saskia & Dobeson, Alexander
-
Carbon Credits from the Great Bear Rainforest. Negotiating Land, Resources, and Reconciliation. Dissertation, Institut für Ethnologie, LMU München.
Brill, Saskia
