ABSTRACT
CLAYOQUOT SOUND: SYMBOL OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST
Clayoquot (pronounced ‘Claquet’) Sound may never make the environmental big time on a par with Seveso, Chernobyl or Exxon Valdez. But what is happening on the western slopes of Vancouver Island in British Columbia is a classic example of the modern environmental struggle.1 It raises all the contemporary issues-rights of natural objects to exist, respect for the values of indigenous peoples, the scope for ‘green tourism’ and sustained non-consumptive economic opportunity, citizen power over land-use decisions where property rights belong to the world as a whole, not wholly to the commercial timber licence holders, loss of trust for a government that consults through due process then ignores the result, the failure of an independent mediating body to arbitrate an outcome through public consent, and the willingness of thousands of law-abiding people to go to jail, if necessary, to stop the bulldozers. Clayoquot Sound speaks for the spirit of post-Rio environmentalism.
