In the search for sustainable development in forestry, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on the ecological integrity of forests, biodiversity, and other dimensions of forest health. The emerging natural disturbance paradigm, whereby human intervention in the form of harvesting is designed to mimic natural processes, continues this trend of seeking sustainability through ecological or biological solutions. The continuation of forests and of human forest communities is related. It is not true, however, that if we pay attention to the forest ecology, then community sustainability will automatically follow. With the failure of sustained yield policy, we have already learned this lesson the hard way.

Community sustainability requires special attention to social and institutional relationships that are sometimes only indirectly related to the forest. One such relationship that may be critical for the long-term health and well-being of the community is that between companies or firms that operate large-scale processing facilities and the small, rural communities in which these activities take place. In the past, companies have struggled with this relationship. Earlier in this century, a paradigm shift took place related to the way corporations interacted with their host communities. Prior to this shift, it was common practice for companies to be involved in every aspect of community life in forest-dependent communities. A combination of maintenance costs, changes in the political climate (with the ascendency of organized labor after the Great Depression), and changes in societal attitudes about the appropriateness of extensive company involvement in community affairs led corporate managers to a more "hands off" approach. This approach is more common today than the corporate-sponsored welfare model practiced in the early part of the century.

These two models of corporate-community relations represent two extreme points on the swinging arc of a pendulum. I believe that the pendulum is about to swing back toward center. Communities are soliciting greater corporate involvement in community affairs. Conversely, companies are now seeking more community involvement in forest management, and they recognize that they have some responsibility for, and may reap some benefit from, better company-community relations. Nevertheless, many managers are at a loss as to how to develop this new relationship, or how to achieve this new state of affairs. Several managers whom I have interviewed or spoken with informally over the years have expressed a desire to do more for the communities in which they operate. But they do not know how to direct their effort and resources, and they are sensitive about rekindling past criticisms of paternalism and meddling in social, cultural, and political aspects of community affairs.

This essay is an attempt to help companies and communities realize an altogether different model of corporate-community relations that has rarely been tried in the past. Helping communities help themselves is the guiding principle of this model. For communities to be sustainable, they must be adaptable, and to that end they require a certain degree of social capacity.

At the risk of conjuring a paternalistic image and putting off community leaders, the analogy of parents helping their children with homework is a useful way to understand the theme helping communities help themselves. The corporate, private-welfare model -- under which companies provided housing, recreation, health care, and a host of other services for local communities -- was similar to parents' doing their children's homework for them. The children do not learn anything or develop the skills and capacity to function in the absence of the parents' assistance, and thus they become overly dependent. In the event that the parents (or the company) leave, as parents (and companies) sometimes do, the children (or the community) will be ill-prepared to adapt to the social and economic upheaval that such a departure inevitably brings.

By contrast, with the hands-off approach, practiced commonly today, companies pretend to be no different from small businesses in the community. This route ignores the very real and historic dependence that communities have on some companies.

The model suggested here calls for an active and supporting role on the part of the company, but one that enhances rather than reduces the capacity of communities to adapt to change and influence their own future. Following are five recommendations for corporate action.
 

1) Actively support and sponsor human capital development
 

Educational attainment levels in forest-processing communities are often lower than state, regional, and national averages. Historically in such places, people (more acurately, men) could obtain high paying jobs in the mill with minimal education, sometimes without even a high school diploma. Many companies have changed their policies of hiring local young people before they finish high school. A grade-12 minimum requirement is an improvement. But an individual with a high school diploma who has worked 20 years in one position on a paper machine is not-well positioned to compete in the labor market. People increasingly find themselves in such a position either due to temporary shutdowns caused by low commodity prices, or due to more long-term and permanent changes associated with corporate downsizing, or due to the relocation of processing facilities.
 

Many forest companies sponsor technical skills upgrading for their own staff. This practice should be continued, but the principle should be expanded in two ways. First, companies should also support general education in their labor force, not just technical education. Many of their employees declined on the opportunity to attend college or university in order to take advantage of high wages or for the prospect of living and working close to family. Later in life such individuals may desire to learn more about a wide range of subjects, including the arts and humanities, and general science. Such learning, which will likely produce a more fulfilled, well-rounded, productive work-force, should be encouraged.

Secondly, companies should support the local infrastructure of adult education for the entire community, not just their employees. This might be done by providing space for classes, by lobbying post-secondary institutions to provide a wider range of course offerings, or to work with community leaders to establish such institutions in cases where none exist. Modern technology has dramatically increased the potential of distance education and remote learning. For truly remote forest-dependent communities, access to post-secondary education may be closer than many think. It no longer requires the construction of new facilities and recruiting staff. It may be as simple as providing a room, a television, and a cable or satelite link. The result of creating greater opportunity to upgrade skills community-wide will be a more fulfilled and well-rounded workforce, and community. It would raise the overall level of human capital in the community, and would thus create a community with a more diverse range of skills and competencies which could serve it well when economic conditions change.
 

2) Actively support and sponsor leadership development
 

In one community where I have worked, the company had taken a hands-off approach to community affairs for over two decades. Prior to that time, company leaders doubled as community leaders. Local citizens became doubly dependent upon the company, not just for its economic contributions, but for local and regional political representation as well. In the past two decades since the company adopted a more laissez-faire approach to community politics, no viable local leadership has developed. Locals resent company involvement in community affairs, yet they still expect the corporate leaders to double as community leaders in times of crisis.
 

Leadership development is a special kind of human capital development. It also may be severely lacking in communities with a legacy of corporate paternalism. Leadership training can take a variety of forms. Some approaches focus on self-actualization and personal development skills. Others attempt to foster team approaches to problem solving. It is not enough to develop simply the technical or labor-force skills of small communities. Leadership training is required if the community wishes to have outlets to apply those skills. Fostering leadership development may be as simple as bolstering the confidence of some local individuals to the point where they will take action, whether that is running for office, representing the local community on a regional board or in a regional planning process, or organizing a service group. Another way would be to offer some startup funds for individuals interested in creating new service organizations in the community. Company staff could also help by tutoring potential service group leaders on such issues as creating business plans or developing long-range strategic plans.
 

3) Encourage entrepreneurship
 

Dependence upon extra-local, large firms can be a self-reinforcing phenomenon in some instances. Because people are able to make high wages in the mill, many who might have otherwise started their own business do not. Also, high wages at the mill may intimidate other medium-sized businesses from locating in the area because the mill has already "skimmed the cream" of the labor force. The result is a lack of local entrepreneurship, and a lack of drawing power for new, non-local entrepreneurs. This lack of entrepreneurship results in many of these communities being under-serviced for towns of their size. People must commute for many services and goods that might be supplied locally. Interview respondents in many of these communities have told us that they have lots of money, but locally there is nothing to buy.
 

Forest-processing companies and other resource-extractive industries often pay high wages, relative to other wage opportunities in rural areas. This means that over the years, some workers may save enough capital to start their own small businesses. This should be encouraged, not discouraged. Companies may fear they will ultimately lose a skilled employee, but only in rare cases is this likely to happen. Few would turn down the steady, guaranteed wage from the mill for the long hours and small pay common in small business startups. Occasionally, the practice of actively supporting local entrepreneurs might result in a few workers taking retirement a few years earlier than normal, but if the company is supporting local human capital development, another qualified person should not be difficult to find. Supporting local entrepreneurship can work both ways, as well. A few may leave the company to start their own businesses, but company sponsorship of Junior Achievement and other youth entrepreneurship training could result in more recruitable local talent for the ranks of salaried staff.

Local entrepreneurship can lead to diversification of the local economy. It can result in a wider range of goods and services being available locally, and therefore reduce leakages of expenditures outside the local area. High wages provided by forest companies result in benefits to employees. Unless those wages are spent and respent locally, however, those wages provide little benefit to the community at large.

Companies can help in several ways. First, they can support existing entrepreneurs by buying locally when possible, particularly for services that small businesses commonly provide such as catering, small-scale construction (office remodeling as opposed to plant expansions), and putting up out-of-town visitors in B & B's and locally owned motels as opposed to chains. Companies may also be able to support specialized technical services such as mapping, transportation (helicopters or small planes), and forestry or environmental consulting. Secondly, companies can help by supporting training in entrepreneurship, just as in supporting human capital and leadership. This may be done by supporting (with cash, in-kind support, or by being a customer) existing programs at the high-school, community-college, or adult-education level. In the absence of these types of programs, companies might sponsor their own entrepreneurship training programs, particularly for specific services that they might want to purchase locally but that are not currently available.
 

4) Help those least able to help themselves
 

Class divisions in forest mill towns used to be between hourly and salaried workers in the mill, particularly in the early years of community development when there were few other services or businesses in the community. Today, people do not talk about class divisions in terms of owners and workers or salaried versus wage workers. They talk about the "haves" and "have-nots." The former are generally those who make high wages or high salaries working in any position in the mill; the latter are those who work in local service jobs, or those who cannot find regular work. In many forest-dependent communities these divisions are widening. This can lead to jealousy and hostility, and can seriously divide communities that may need to be united in order to be sustainable.
 

Many companies are already doing a great deal to support their communities by supporting their own work force. Sometimes this means supporting groups in which employees are involved. It might take the form of well-funded employee assistance programs to deal with personal and social problems. However, extensive support of employees or subsidization of off-work employee activities may exacerbate the problem of internal community divisions. Efforts to support the unemployed, the underemployed, or those in the service sector will decrease the sense of jealously that often exists with non-employees. The above three recommendations -- actively supporting human capital development, leadership development, and entrepreneurship for both company employees and non-employees -- will contribute to the solution of this problem. In addition, companies can provide more direct aid to local service groups that may or may not cater to their own employees, such as groups that provide low-cost child care, women's shelters, or food banks. These types of activities should be supported before youth hockey, ATV or snowmobile clubs, or other activities that may benefit primarily company workers or other middle and upper-middle class community members. The idea is to bring the bottom strata of the community up to the middle, rather than contributing to the community in ways that widens the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots."
 

5) Provide all the above services and support to the entire "impact area" of the mill
 

Many communities that host large forest-processing facilities are extremely well-endowed with services. Even with tax concessions, large processing facilities usually pay the lion's share of local taxes due to the large amounts of fixed capital invested locally. This enables host communities to offer higher quality services than comparably sized communities that rely only on residential and small business assessments for their tax base. Nearby or adjacent communities may be directly affected by the operations of the mill, through effluent releases, through forest harvesting, or through employment. There are certainly both benefits and costs, both social and economic, associated with having large companies in small, rural communities. In a regional context, however, those costs and benefits may be distributed very unevenly across communities.
 

The principle behind this point is simple, and closely mirrors that of the previous point. Companies have impacts, both positive and negative, in communities in which they operate. Most acknowledge this and take some responsibility for mitigating some of those negative impacts. However, those negative impacts may also extend to the broader region surrounding communities that host processing facilities. In western Canada, many forest management agreements cover areas that are millions of hectares in size. These huge areas also contain many other, usually smaller, and often Aboriginal communities. Companies should do what they can to spread the employment and tax benefits they provide across their entire impact area. Moreover, their mitigation efforts and community service programs should also extend to this larger area. This will help prevent a hierarchy of "have" and "have-not" communities, just as targeting programs in communities to those less fortunate, can reduce intra-community inequality.
 

Conclusion

There is no single recipe for success in creating sustainable communities. However, it has been my experience that many companies are seeking to redefine their relationship with their host communities. While the desire exists, direction is sometimes absent. Local managers have a difficult time justifying, in their own minds or to extra-local corporate executives, investments in communities that do not have an immediate payback to the company. Sometimes, the payback may be purely public relations gains. When companies do spend dollars supporting community activities, they usually also spend a few dollars calling attention to their generosity.

The model suggested here goes beyond public relations. It encourages companies to take a longer view. The underlying assumption in the recommendations provided above is that healthy, democratic, well-educated communities will be better places to live and do business than overly dependent, leaderless communities divided by class and fraught with internal strife and jealousies. Ultimately, there may be direct payoffs to companies that engage in the practices recommended here, but many of the benefits may not be realized for years. An increase in small business through support of entrepreneurial activity training may ultimately reduce tax burdens of companies. Support of skill development, and human capital enhancement, may lead to a higher quality company labor force. Leadership training may reduce companies' responsibility for representing community interests in regional, state, or provincial political fora. These benefits may take time to develop, if they develop at all. In the meantime, public relations benefits will certainly accrue. By demonstrating a caring attitude, without strings attached (for example, favorable re-assessment of taxes) companies will be recognized as good local citizens, and they will enjoy support from employees and non-employees alike. Even in the event that a company ultimately decides to leave a community, if they leave behind a community capable of surviving or even thriving without their historic primary employer, the fallout from the exit will likely be greatly reduced and the legacy of the company might still be recognized as a positive one.