Green Territories in Action : New Management Processes and Forms in Canadian National Parks

In Canada creating, managing and valorising wildlife reserves implies a crucial role of the State and other institutional players (Provinces, Lands and Communities), including the employment of territorial governance practices that are more or less efficient depending on the specific context. The aim of this paper was to highlight the role of federal power in supporting the collective and inseparable value of the heritage managed through Parks Canada. It has also highlighted how the measures adopted modify the economic procedures of production in protected areas, review social behaviours and choose the more or less efficient territorial management policies. The need, in some cases a real emergency, to preserve nature and culture as Canadian heritage, in a sustainable and lasting development frame, shows the will to consider and improve the multiple functions that protected areas may play. However, the enthusiastic support of sustainable development values in protected areas is in contrast with the widespread pollution, the acceleration of processes that lead to significant biodiversity loss and climate changes. This ambiguity is also reflected in the Canadian political élite of the last decades, who made contradictory choices for the “young” Canadian democracy.