Influences on trust during collaborative forest governance: a case study from Haida Gwaii

Collaborative natural resource governance is increasingly relied upon to resolve conflicts, generate social and ecological benefits, and increase implementation of decisions. Trust is widely recognized as critical to successful collaborative natural resource governance; however, the multidimensional nature of trust has been underexplored in this context, and few studies specifically address collaborations involving Indigenous Peoples. Literature on collaborative governance involving Indigenous Peoples emphasizes issues of power-sharing, participation, and intercultural purpose and insights into how trust created with these considerations in mind have the potential to improve processes and outcomes. This paper used a case study of collaborative forest governance on Haida Gwaii, an archipelago located off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, to identify linkages between power-sharing and individual, interpersonal, and institutional influences on trust. Collaborative forest resource governance on Haida Gwaii formally began following signing of the Strategic Land Use Agreement (2007) and the Kunst'aa guu-Kunst'aayah Reconciliation Protocol (2009) and had led the Haida to achieve several of their goals for resource management. The research linked theoretical and empirical literature on collaborative governance and trust with empirical evidence gathered from 19 semi-structured interviews with current and former members of the Haida Gwaii Management Council and the Solutions Table and identified five individual influences, five interpersonal influences, and four institutional influences on trust.