THUNDER BAY, ON, - March 30, 2008 - The Northern Ontario Sustainable Communities Partnership through its Northern Ontario Community Forest Charter (see http://www.gcf-on.ca/noscp) has been promoting the development of a diversified northern bioeconomy based on the principle of directing "the resources of the forests to the economic and social development of the people of the region."

It seems that NOSCP's bioeconomy ideas are getting lots of attention in the media but its community forestry ideas are not. Yet the latter is a much more profound shift for northern Ontario than the development of yet another economic sector that is controlled by outside groups. If a new bioeconomy is largely developed by outside companies and distant government offices like the forest sector has been, the fundamental problem in northern Ontario will only continue - control by outside groups. While NOSCP supports the development of a northern Ontario bioeconomy, that development must also be sustainable and directed and controlled by local groups. We would like to see more debate and discussion of the recommendation in the recently released Rosehart

Report to move towards a more community forestry type of tenure:

 "...the new forest tenure system envisioned for the Northwest would consist of a series of quasi-independent, ecosystem-based authorities. Each would have a board of directors, with a reporting relationship to the Minister of MNR, and would be broadly representative of society and the users [and] the management of these new authorities would be [by] a group of users and stakeholders, which would include First Nations users of the forest".