Highlights from the conference:
New Tools for Conservation Stewardship
The Alberta L.U.F. began as an initiative in 1973 Alberta Land Use Forum to address issues regarding the conservation of farm land. Alberta was one of the fastest growing provinces with cities consuming massive amounts of prime farm land which would be used to facilitate urban growth.
In examining land uses throughout Canada, it can be determined that approximately 5% of our livable area is either built on prime farm land or is immediately adjacent to prime farm land. With the majority of food producing lands being in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, it is up to the prairie provinces to look at protecting these lands for the future while still allowing responsible levels of growth.
As part of the L.U.F., the government developed Bill 36: Alberta Land Stewardship Act (ALSA) and passed it into law in June 2009. The purpose of ALSA is to promote responsible regional planning by addressing matters of environmental concern – watersheds, land uses, natural habitats, natural resources, etc. The bill identifies how environmental conservation can potentially conflict in land use with economic and social factors such as industrial development, urban sprawl, and acreage/sub-division development.
Conservation and stewardship tools came out of ALSA, but have not been fully developed and implemented. These tools are:
Conservation Easements – voluntary legal agreement (includes agricultural land) that protects land from development and fragmentation.
Conservation Offsets – legislation that offers a counterbalance to development of lands that have an ecological value (ex. Wetlands or forests) and requires developers replace or compensate for these lands.
Conservation Directives – regional plans that direct which lands are to be conserved. This will be rare situations, but land owners will be allowed to apply for compensation.
Transferable Development Credits (TDC) – tax credits that will be used to compensate land owners whose land falls in a conservation area. The credits are sold by land owners to developers who will have these TDC as incentives to intensity development within a development area. This system is currently in place in the U.S. and is seen as a successful model.
In order to best deal with stakeholder concerns, education and information must be offered to the public, municipal leaders, planners and developers. In addition, the process must be seen to be as transparent and as fair as possible. Discussion from conference attendees begged for simplicity in whatever system is implemented and some type of measurement system to track progress and measure successes. It was agreed that regional plans were necessary as a single plan is not able to meet the specific needs of each of the 7 areas identified in the L.U.F.
In summary, the tools identified in ALSA are intended to be “land owner friendly” and flexible tools to promote conservation as well as providing economic incentives to offer fair compensation to land owners.
A Watershed & Landscape Approach to Regional Planning
• Different landscapes (combination of grassland, forest, water, rock structure, etc.) require different management.
• Management needs to be coordinated across jurisdictional boundaries.
• Management units are best described as a combination of land and sub-basins (water).
• “Balancing” land uses is a motherhood statement that need to be more clearly defined. The statement only makes sense when it is expressed in a practical sense and illustrated spatially.
• Integral to determining a “balance” is a vision based on principles of conservation based around maintaining biodiversity of an area.
• Equally important is the need to protect and understand our watersheds (i.e. water quality) since every water source is a downstream product of another one.
• Don’t make the mistake of believing that increasing densities in urban development is the only solution. Increased densities create other problems such as production of “impenetrable lands” (runoff from roads, buildings and parking lots) that don’t promote re-absorption of water back to the soil and into the water table.
• Increased densities should be planned alongside of increased open spaces (parks). This has many benefits in terms of higher populations and increased recreational lands, but does not necessarily address the issue of urban sprawl because more than 10% green space is required (should be closer to 25% depending on population density).
• Conservation and development must be planned together, otherwise you may lose a natural ecological resource that can never be reclaimed again.
Balanced Rural Communities
There were a number of factors that were identified as making a rural community balanced and sustainable. The main factors include access to services (medical, utilities, recreation, education, police, fire, etc.), good infrastructure, tax base (industrial, commercial and residential), sense of community (events, volunteers, etc.), ability to attract and retain youth/residents, and ability to grow and adopt new technologies.
After much discussion on how rural communities address infrastructure needs and service deficiencies, the common thread behind the discussion was that rural communities don’t necessarily need to deliver the services/infrastructure themselves, as long as they have access to needs and wants within minutes of their community. The appeal of rural communities comes from the community bonds and friendships. Rural communities should focus on satisfying core needs and perhaps the one key element that makes them unique, but more importantly, focus on the sense of community that people are looking for in a rural environment.
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