Evaluating collaborative planning: A case study of the North Coast Land and Resource Management Plan

The North Coast of British Columbia is a unique ecological region of 1.8 million hectares. Conflict over the management of the area among First Nations, resource companies, and environmentalists has been intense. After two and half years of collaborative planning, consensus on a resource plan for the region was reached in the spring of 2006. The collaborative process to develop the plan used innovations to address deficiencies in previous processes such as involvement of First Nations, the use of ecosystem-based management, and the use of an independent research team to provide objective information to stakeholders. This paper reports on the evaluation of the North Coast process based on a stakeholder participant survey using 25 process and outcome criteria. The paper assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the innovative process and identifies lessons for collaborative planning.