An analysis of the literature on sustainability reveals that community decision making is an important component in the definition and implementation of sustainability. Although the importance of participation by all members of a community is stressed in the literature, analysis of marginalized groups focuses mainly on class and culture. When gender lines are explored, it is mostly within the context of the developing world. The purpose of this research was to examine the nature of women's participation in defining and implementing sustainability. This exploration had three objectives: to define effective public participation in the context of local level environmental decision making, to identify barriers to women inherent in public participation processes associated with environmental planning decisions and to make recommendations which eliminate barriers to women's participation in planning decisions. Barriers to women's participation were divided into three categories: institutional, community and societal. This research used a case study approach with multiple sources of evidence to examine these barriers. The public participation process involved in developing the Squamish Estuary Management Plan was analyzed to explore the nature and extent of women's participation. Research methods included document and newspaper coverage analysis, interviews and workshops. These revealed that specific barriers exist which discourage and prevent women from participating in planning decisions. At an institutional level, these included lack of trust, centralized decision-making, poor communication structures, an atmosphere that was not childfriendly and the failure to present the Plan in a way which was relevant to women's lives. Community barriers consisted of the fear of retaliation and the large number of community issues. Societal barriers identified were the devaluing of women's voices, level of income and the restrictions caused by women's societal roles. These barriers reduced the effectiveness of the public participation process. Results were used to develop a series of recommendations about how to encourage women's participation in decision-making, ensuring that women in communities are involved in shaping and defining sustainability.

While many communities have readily adopted "sustainability" as one of the community objectives in their planning documents, the actual application of sustainable practices has proven to be challenging for planners and communities. Some of the primary reasons for these challenges may include: • the disconnect between communities visual preferences and sustainable landscapes; • the limitations of current public consultation processes to solicit representational and meaningful input from the community due to the "shopping list" approach to developing official community plans encouraged by the Local Government Act; • the failure of conventional public consultation processes to reach certain segments of the community because of cultural differences or reluctance to publicly "speak one's mind"; and • the difficulties in the prioritization of the information from the public consultation processes into holistic planning policies. In the mean time, current research from various disciplines has established evidence to suggest incongruence between visual preferences and ecologically sustainable landscapes: preference for specific landscape typologies does not seem to be affected by the ecological performance of the landscape. The gap in ecological knowledge about sustainability may have contributed to this situation. The bridging of this gap between knowledge and preference was explored through the application of visual preferences for stormwater management in a rural context. The coastal community of Royston on Vancouver Island was used as a case study for a visual preference survey pilot project. The survey results were synthesized to identify a community aesthetic for Royston and to transform into criteria for selecting sustainable stormwater management best management practices that are appropriate to a rural community to reflect: • the community's preferred aesthetic based on the results from the visual preference survey to promote better acceptance of sustainable working landscapes; • the goals and objectives, and the policies adopted in the Royston Local Area Plan; • the economic realities of a small community; and • flexibility to address new development needs and the necessity to "retrofit" stormwater management practices into existing developments

These are challenging times for parks and protected areas in British Columbia as these areas have increased in size and use, while resources for managing them have shrunk considerably. Environmental nongovernment organisations (ENGOs) have recognized these threats and as a result are becoming increasingly involved in the stewardship of parks and protected areas. As the provincial government authority responsible for their management, BC Parks acknowledges that the needs and aspirations of people living in and around these areas must somehow be integrated in their management in order to ensure their long-term viability, and that ENGOs have valuable knowledge and skills to offer in this regard. As a result, cooperative arrangements, or partnerships, are being increasingly explored as a mutually beneficial means of forwarding BC Parks' mandate of conservation and recreation, and the mandate of similarly-minded ENGOs. The central purpose of this thesis is to identify essential criteria that must be met for cooperative arrangements between ENGOs and BC Parks to be successful. The study focusses on four current, successful partnerships. Research methods included a literature review and interviews with representatives from each of the participating BC Parks districts and ENGOs. The thesis presents a number of key findings that have significant import to the successful planning, implementation and management of cooperative arrangements for parks and protected areas. In addition to the criteria identified as central to their success, certain process-based actions have relevance to fulfilling the criteria. The level of trust between partners also has an impact on relations, which is enhanced when the criteria are met and over the course of time. The expectations of parties with regard to the extent of power-sharing and how this is exhibited in the cooperative arrangement also affects the perceived level of success of partners and therefore their commitment to the partnership.

The Green Plan, Canada's six year environmental agenda, has now guided Canadian environmental policy for over a year and a half. In that time span, a large number of environmental initiatives have been announced under the Green Plan, and an even larger number are still promised. However, not every initiative contributes equally to preventing or abating pollution. The extent to which an initiative contributes directly to an improvement in environmental quality depends on the level of coercion of the policy instrument it employs. Initiatives which involve relatively coercive policy instruments, in particular regulatory action, are more likely to achieve their goal in the immediate future than initiatives which rely largely on persuasion such as guidelines and public education. The classification of the policy instruments in the Green Plan reveals a strong preference on the part of the federal government for non-coercive over coercive instruments. Only 13 per cent of the Green Plan initiatives involve regulatory action. The majority involve increasing capacity which means that the initiatives centre around research, studies, monitoring and plan development. The Fraser River Action Plan, a Green Plan initiative announced in June 1991, reflects the same federal preference for capacity increasing instruments as the larger Green Plan. Several variables help to explain this preference: constitutional constraints, pressure from other levels of government, opposition from industry, and environmental interest group pressure. Both the events leading up to the Green Plan and the implementation of the Fraser River Action Plan, suggest that the strongest motivating factor for the choice of policy instruments is the concern to avoid blame from the interests affected by a particular initiative. In practice, this means that the federal government is reluctant to make use of its regulatory authority to impose clean-up costs on the polluting industry. It also avoids to interfere with provincial jurisdiction over natural resources. In order to avoid blame from environmental groups and the public, who demand tighter pollution controls, the government relies on symbolic actions. Symbolic actions enable the government to show its concern but postpone pollution abatement to a later date. Federal reluctance to make use of its full constitutional authority in the area of environmental policy making combined with the large budget cuts the Green Plan has seen during its relatively short period of existence, belies the federal commitment to protecting the environment. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

An analysis of the literature on sustainability reveals that community decision making is an important component in the definition and implementation of sustainability. Although the importance of participation by all members of a community is stressed in the literature, analysis of marginalized groups focuses mainly on class and culture. When gender lines are explored, it is mostly within the context of the developing world. The purpose of this research was to examine the nature of women's participation in defining and implementing sustainability. This exploration had three objectives: to define effective public participation in the context of local level environmental decision making, to identify barriers to women inherent in public participation processes associated with environmental planning decisions and to make recommendations which eliminate barriers to women's participation in planning decisions. Barriers to women's participation were divided into three categories: institutional, community and societal. This research used a case study approach with multiple sources of evidence to examine these barriers. The public participation process involved in developing the Squamish Estuary Management Plan was analyzed to explore the nature and extent of women's participation. Research methods included document and newspaper coverage analysis, interviews and workshops. These revealed that specific barriers exist which discourage and prevent women from participating in planning decisions. At an institutional level, these included lack of trust, centralized decision-making, poor communication structures, an atmosphere that was not childfriendly and the failure to present the Plan in a way which was relevant to women's lives. Community barriers consisted of the fear of retaliation and the large number of community issues. Societal barriers identified were the devaluing of women's voices, level of income and the restrictions caused by women's societal roles. These barriers reduced the effectiveness of the public participation process. Results were used to develop a series of recommendations about how to encourage women's participation in decision-making, ensuring that women in communities are involved in shaping and defining sustainability. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

While many communities have readily adopted "sustainability" as one of the community objectives in their planning documents, the actual application of sustainable practices has proven to be challenging for planners and communities. Some of the primary reasons for these challenges may include: • the disconnect between communities visual preferences and sustainable landscapes; • the limitations of current public consultation processes to solicit representational and meaningful input from the community due to the "shopping list" approach to developing official community plans encouraged by the Local Government Act; • the failure of conventional public consultation processes to reach certain segments of the community because of cultural differences or reluctance to publicly "speak one's mind"; and • the difficulties in the prioritization of the information from the public consultation processes into holistic planning policies. In the mean time, current research from various disciplines has established evidence to suggest incongruence between visual preferences and ecologically sustainable landscapes: preference for specific landscape typologies does not seem to be affected by the ecological performance of the landscape. The gap in ecological knowledge about sustainability may have contributed to this situation. The bridging of this gap between knowledge and preference was explored through the application of visual preferences for stormwater management in a rural context. The coastal community of Royston on Vancouver Island was used as a case study for a visual preference survey pilot project. The survey results were synthesized to identify a community aesthetic for Royston and to transform into criteria for selecting sustainable stormwater management best management practices that are appropriate to a rural community to reflect: • the community's preferred aesthetic based on the results from the visual preference survey to promote better acceptance of sustainable working landscapes; • the goals and objectives, and the policies adopted in the Royston Local Area Plan; • the economic realities of a small community; and • flexibility to address new development needs and the necessity to "retrofit" stormwater management practices into existing developments / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

These are challenging times for parks and protected areas in British Columbia as these areas have increased in size and use, while resources for managing them have shrunk considerably. Environmental nongovernment organisations (ENGOs) have recognized these threats and as a result are becoming increasingly involved in the stewardship of parks and protected areas. As the provincial government authority responsible for their management, BC Parks acknowledges that the needs and aspirations of people living in and around these areas must somehow be integrated in their management in order to ensure their long-term viability, and that ENGOs have valuable knowledge and skills to offer in this regard. As a result, cooperative arrangements, or partnerships, are being increasingly explored as a mutually beneficial means of forwarding BC Parks' mandate of conservation and recreation, and the mandate of similarly-minded ENGOs. The central purpose of this thesis is to identify essential criteria that must be met for cooperative arrangements between ENGOs and BC Parks to be successful. The study focusses on four current, successful partnerships. Research methods included a literature review and interviews with representatives from each of the participating BC Parks districts and ENGOs. The thesis presents a number of key findings that have significant import to the successful planning, implementation and management of cooperative arrangements for parks and protected areas. In addition to the criteria identified as central to their success, certain process-based actions have relevance to fulfilling the criteria. The level of trust between partners also has an impact on relations, which is enhanced when the criteria are met and over the course of time. The expectations of parties with regard to the extent of power-sharing and how this is exhibited in the cooperative arrangement also affects the perceived level of success of partners and therefore their commitment to the partnership. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

This thesis analyses a special form of land conservation, community-initiated conservation (CIC). CIC is rooted in communities working to protect lands that they deem biologically or recreationally important. A community starts the CIC process, not government or conservation organisations. To protect spaces, communities may link with governments for institutional recognition and management, or the land and its management may remain in the hands of the community. Social research methods that place the author/researcher within the context of his value system and the values of the community studied form the cornerstone of the thesis. Of the many ways of analysing CIC, this thesis utilises collaboration theory. To apply collaboration theory to the CIC processes on Galiano, the thesis first sets the context: how land conservation in BC is effected, followed by what makes CIC unique. Ultimately, the theory on collaboration is combined with CIC experiences to develop a framework of analysis, which is then applied to two CIC processes on Galiano Island, BC and answers the following questions: 1. Is collaboration theory a relevant tool for evaluating CICs, particularly if CICs are not "as collaborative" as other processes? 2. Can CIC on Galiano Island, BC be considered collaborative? If CIC on Galiano is collaborative, to what extent was it collaborative in a multistakeholder sense? 3. How well did the citizens of Galiano collaborate? 4. How can collaboration theory strengthen CIC? The research concludes that collaboration theory is a relevant tool to analyse CICs, despite their limited inclusion o f potential public stakeholders suggested by other multistakeholder processes such as the B C Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy. CIC as practised on Galiano did not follow the ideal steps for collaboration according to collaboration theorists; however, the groups did ultimately conserve land. The consequences are a continued contentious atmosphere on the Island, reluctance by all parties to enter other collaborative efforts and mistrust within the community. Finally, the thesis recommends actions for other CICs in B C based on the experiences of the Galiano processes. These recommendations are categorised under the headings: the collaborative process, stakeholders and stakeholder interactions and the larger context of the CIC process.

This thesis analyses a special form of land conservation, community-initiated conservation (CIC). CIC is rooted in communities working to protect lands that they deem biologically or recreationally important. A community starts the CIC process, not government or conservation organisations. To protect spaces, communities may link with governments for institutional recognition and management, or the land and its management may remain in the hands of the community. Social research methods that place the author/researcher within the context of his value system and the values of the community studied form the cornerstone of the thesis. Of the many ways of analysing CIC, this thesis utilises collaboration theory. To apply collaboration theory to the CIC processes on Galiano, the thesis first sets the context: how land conservation in BC is effected, followed by what makes CIC unique. Ultimately, the theory on collaboration is combined with CIC experiences to develop a framework of analysis, which is then applied to two CIC processes on Galiano Island, BC and answers the following questions: 1. Is collaboration theory a relevant tool for evaluating CICs, particularly if CICs are not "as collaborative" as other processes? 2. Can CIC on Galiano Island, BC be considered collaborative? If CIC on Galiano is collaborative, to what extent was it collaborative in a multistakeholder sense? 3. How well did the citizens of Galiano collaborate? 4. How can collaboration theory strengthen CIC? The research concludes that collaboration theory is a relevant tool to analyse CICs, despite their limited inclusion o f potential public stakeholders suggested by other multistakeholder processes such as the B C Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy. CIC as practised on Galiano did not follow the ideal steps for collaboration according to collaboration theorists; however, the groups did ultimately conserve land. The consequences are a continued contentious atmosphere on the Island, reluctance by all parties to enter other collaborative efforts and mistrust within the community. Finally, the thesis recommends actions for other CICs in B C based on the experiences of the Galiano processes. These recommendations are categorised under the headings: the collaborative process, stakeholders and stakeholder interactions and the larger context of the CIC process. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Contaminated sites are a common problem across municipalities in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. These problems are complicated and multi-dimensional, and raise fundamental concerns about the risks to human and environmental health. This thesis shows however, that there are no easy answers to how much risk is "acceptable", and no one right way to decide. How the acceptable risk problem is structured is important, because fact and value issues, a source of controversy and dispute, are variously interpreted depending on how the problem is cast. The literature generically categorizes acceptable risk as either a technical, social or decision problem, and each of these have implications for the types of decision-making approaches and solutions that are considered appropriate in resolving acceptable risk. This thesis investigated how acceptable risk in contaminated site problems is handled in British Columbia by reviewing the provincial decision-making framework, and by surveying municipalities in the Greater Vancouver Regional District for their views on contaminated site problems and acceptable risk decision-making. The underlying goal of the thesis is to question the use of the current approach, the Pacific Place site criteria, as a model for acceptable risk decision-making in the province, and to explore the implications for urban communities. The Ministry of Environment is the central authority for contaminated sites in British Columbia and has generally taken a scientific and technical approach to the problem. Although the municipal survey suggests that the Pacific Place site criteria has a broad base of support in the GVRD, the technical emphasis has implications for urban communities. The approach is expert-oriented and largely excludes local and public involvement in the acceptable risk debate. The major concern is that important social value issues have been neglected, relative to the engineering and technical aspects of the problem. The research also finds however, that the majority of individuals in the municipal survey are willing to explore other methods of determining acceptable risk, and support in principle, local government and public involvement in deciding what these methods should be. This thesis suggests that British Columbia can benefit from a more comprehensive view of acceptable risk in contaminated site problems. Resource limitations at the provincial and local level, and the high stakes in contaminated site problems for urban communities point to the growing importance of incorporating a broad range of value issues and understanding the trade-offs in acceptable risk decisions. The Ministry of Environment can improve the current decision-making approach by: incorporating structured value assessments that elicit stakeholder values and address trade-offs; involving a wider range of stakeholders in standard setting and risk assessment, including the forthcoming review of the Pacific Place site criteria; creating forums to explore other decision-making approaches; and by encouraging private sector involvement in risk assessment and risk management. The province can also encourage and support community-based institutional networks, both at the municipal and regional level.