Voluntary Planning

Vision:
Ecosystems and the natural resources they contain providing uncompromised ecological goods and services (clean water, clean air, and recreational opportunities that are sustainable for generations to come).

Strengths:
Biodiversity - Ecosystems are generally quite resilient as long as you maintain them with the natural range in which species historically adapted. Forests - provide the opportunity to generate a blend of ecological, social, and economic goods and services, provided that economic goals do not overshadow ecological and social goals. Minerals - have been there a long time and will continue to be for a long time. Future generations will need them as much (or more) than we do, provided that we leave them some. Parks - provide the opportunity to protect representative samples of Nova Scotia's ecosystems, which can be used to demonstrate good natural resource conservation on a small scale.

Barriers and Issues:
Biodiversity values are usually tacked on as an afterthought after objectives are set for economic and social objectives. Forests - private land ownership makes the job more challenging (though not impossible) to conserve ecological goods and services over large areas. Minerals - extraction for economic gain usually comes at the often undervalued loss of ecological goods and services. Parks are important, but can't be viewed as the solution to protecting ecosystems; this needs to be done across all public and private land.

Community's Priorities:
Conservation of biodiversity and the production of ecological goods and services (clean water, clean air, etc.) should form the foundation on which all other natural resource management is built. If forests are managed to emulate natural disturbance patterns and the range of conditions within which species have adapted, forest management should maintain biodiversity and ecological goods and services while allowing for conservative production of economic and social goods and services (jobs, recreation, etc.). Minerals, which are a non-renewable resource, should only be exploited if it can be done in a way that does not negatively impact biological conservation and the capacity of the land to produce ecological goods and services. Parks should be used to protect the ecological integrity of a representation of Nova Scotian ecosystems and should provide compatible recreation value, but should not be the prime focus for natural resource conservation; this needs to be done over the larger private and public land base.

Guiding the health and sustainability:
The public needs to consider ways to assign economic value to ecological goods and services. When people in the cities start to provide rural landowners (and companies) with economic return on investment to protect watersheds and biodiversity, significant advances will be made in conserving these values and restoring what has already been lost.