Voluntary Planning

NOVA SCOTIA NATURAL RESOURCES STRATEGY REVIEW

A BRIEF PRESENTATION OF 10 RECOMMENDATIONS to the
VOLUNTARY PLANNING NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Resources should not be considered as temporary assets to be quickly exploited for short term profit, but as a sustainable inheritance for environmental and human well being.

[Our perception of resources and their uses must change.]

2. The natural resources of Nova Scotia, when used effectively, should provide
maximum benefits for all Nova Scotians and the environment they wish to live in.

[Advantages gained from resources should not be reserved only for a relatively
few individuals or corporations.]

3. Local citizens should have significant input into the decisions affecting the
resources within their communities.

[Decisions should not be made only by others, often only to benefit others.]

4. Strategies to protect wildlife biodiversity and resources should be based on
effective enforcement of regulations, particularly in respect to hunting, trapping
and fishing activities.

[This has not happened in Nova Scotia during the past 400 years.]

5. With regard to strategies for watercourses, forests and minerals, any governing guidelines or regulations should maintain sufficient flexibility to permit "common sense" decisions to prevail as appropriate.

[Strategies should allow change as dictated by changing conditions.]

6. Our forest strategy should be based upon working with nature through
biodiversity within uneven aged forests in a chemical free environment.

[Monocultural woodlots are convenient and high yielding, but are probably not
worth the trade-off in terms of degradation and poisoning of the environment.]

7. Productive agricultural land should be considered as a valuable natural resource and provided with long term protection. Sustainability can be maintained through profitability. In that regard, marketing boards could be initiated for farm products, including food, wood and energy, that would guarantee a minimum fair price to the producer. These would not be intended to compete with the free market system, but rather to complement it by offering a system of "checks and balances" to the excesses of the emerging global monopolistic economy.

[While it is true that goods and services are achieving greater access through
international boundaries, local environmental and social concerns are often lost at the border.]

8. Nova Scotia should also provide tax reform that would permit and encourage long term sustainability of our private farms, forests and fisheries, particularly in
regards to inter-generational property transfers.

[Resources should not have to be trashed or destroyed in order to pay the taxes on them.]

9. Nova Scotia is fortunate to have the resources that could provide most of our
energy requirements from "green" sources, including water, wind, tidal, wave,
renewable fiber, ocean temperature differential and hydrogen power. We should
encourage research to become leaders, and not followers, of new technology
applicable to our conditions.

[Obsolete or damaging technology should be replaced or eliminated ASAP.]

10. A long term resource strategy should assume that homo sapiens will still be
inhabiting our province of Nova Scotia in one hundred or one thousand or ten
thousand years from now. Accordingly, the current objective of protecting 12%
of our land resource from development should be upgraded to around 25% within the next 25 years. In the future, it will be just as essential for people to have an unspoiled place to refresh their minds, their souls and their spirits as it is today.

[Most existing Crown lands should become protected public lands, and the
percentage of public ownership of our land resource should be increased as it
becomes practical to achieve.]

Note:
I wish to thank the Voluntary Planning Natural Resources Committee for the
opportunity of presenting these comments.

It is hoped that the summary of the public hearings will result in a constructive
application of the democratic process.