Neoliberal conservation: Legitimacy and exclusion in the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement

Through the lens of poststructural political ecology this thesis critically interrogates the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA), which was struck in 2010 between nine environmental non-governmental organizations, the Forest Products Association of Canada, and the 21 member companies. Drawing on of the work of Foucault, this thesis performs a discourse analysis, and explores why signatories excluded First Nations and government from the negotiations, how these decisions were normalized, and considers the effects that these developments have had on solidarity and democratic processes within Canadian boreal forest politics. This thesis argues that CBFA signatories operated under the rationale of sustainable development and neoliberal conservation, which facilitated their use of crisis narratives in order to prioritize their joint interests in the boreal forest. However, these efforts have largely been resisted by several opponents of the CBFA, who have called for signatories to respect First Nations right to free, prior and informed consent.