A key component to protecting water quality and quantity
— both for human needs and aquatic ecosystem needs — is protection of land. What
we do on the land affects water by impacts such as erosion, soil and water
pollution, and water-intensive developments. Mechanisms to protect the land are
crucial to protect water resources for drinking supply and to maintain healthy
aquatic ecosystems. The emerging Land-use Framework presents a significant
opportunity to shape how appropriate land use can protect Alberta's water
wealth for our current and future generations.
One way to ‘protect land to protect water' is to create parks and protected areas around significant headwater areas, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and even groundwater recharge areas. This approach is often the most possible on public lands because government has the authority to set aside land for protection. But how do we protect land to protect water on private land? One approach is regulation; another is use of incentives. Regulation to control what happens on private land often happens at the municipal level, using such mechanisms as environmental reserve setbacks and zoning land for specific uses. Incentives can include the conservation easement system.
Some regulatory mechanisms to protect land to protect water
The environmental reserve setback is a regulatory tool under Alberta's Municipal Government Act (MGA) that municipalities can use to protect areas of land alongside rivers and other water bodies from the impacts of development. The MGA states that development must be set back from the edge of a waterway a minimum of six metres. Last year the City of Calgary altered its new development policy to go beyond those six metres and instituted much larger setbacks that depend on such factors as water body type and size as well as slope of the land beside the water body (Manderson 2007).
Municipalities also have tremendous control over where and what type of development is situated near to rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands, as well as groundwater recharge areas. If municipalities move toward planning around ecological infrastructure, functionality of water and land systems and their interactions can be much better protected (Benedict and McMahon 2006).
An incentive mechanism to protect land to protect water
Conservation easements are one incentive-based mechanism to protect land for water. The Columbia Basin Water Transaction Program, for example, is not only setting aside water to keep the Columbia Basin healthy, but it is also encouraging landowners to set aside land along waterways with its Columbia Basin Riparian Easement Program. Started in 2005, this program aims to protect high quality habitat with strategic significance for fish. So far the program has resulted in 263 acres of prime riparian habitat being conserved.
Conservation easements are a popular way to protect land from development on privately owned land. However, they're not always popular enough. Southern Alberta Land Trust Society (SALTS) and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy (MCBD) recently partnered to explore market-based mechanisms for environmental conservation in Alberta.
One of their proposals is to pilot a twist on the existing conservation easement system in Alberta's southern foothills. The twist is altering some of the components of the system to include market-based ideas. The Foothills Project recognizes the value the conservation easement system has for protecting our sources of water, and, therefore, SALTS and MCBD would like to see it used more frequently. Recognizing that setting aside land from use without financial compensation — beyond a federal tax receipt — is very difficult for many landowners, SALTS and MCBD would like to introduce a few market mechanisms to make conservation easements more attractive to land owners.
How would the Foothills Project make the conservation easement more attractive?
Conservation easements often work to limit wetland drainage, forest clear-cutting, native grasslands cultivation, subdivision development, and construction of roads and other infrastructure (SALTS and MCBD 2008). The Foothills Project proposes to change the current easement system in a number of ways. The term of the easement contract would be shifted from perpetuity to a contract between 50 and 99 years. Compensation would be on an annual basis rather than a one-time payment at the contract's beginning. The compensation amount would be determined through a request for proposal (RFP) process rather than appraisal of land value. The bids in the RFP process would reflect all of the factors affecting the landowner and would allow greater flexibility around compensation. This RFP process could allow a bigger-picture approach, where a land trust can set out an area and features that it would like to protect so as to protect land on a watershed basis rather than a site-by-site basis. The ecological goods and services value of the overall area and the individual parcels of land would be determined through a mapping and High Conservation Value (HCV) assessment. Annual compensation as well as progress of any restoration activities could be determined by annual HCV assessments.
Developing the Foothills Project concept involved researching other examples in the world of incentive-based approaches to environmental conservation. Alternative Land Use Services is a Canadian project that encourages farmers to protect and enhance the environmental benefits of their land. New York City's Watershed Management Plan is a much-touted example of cooperating with and incenting landowners to protect the Catskills and Delaware watersheds for high quality downstream drinking water and allowed the City to avoid over $6 billion in costs for two new water filtration plants. In Australia, the Australian government has funded a number of initiatives to encourage protection of ecological goods and services, such as RiverTender, BushTender, and EcoTender projects.
Because much of the land in southern Alberta in privately owned (compared to northern Alberta), finding tools to protect land from development which can be harmful to water and aquatic ecosystems is crucial for protecting southern Alberta's long-term water supply and quality. If the Land-use Framework's proposed regional planning makes water a priority in land-use planning in the province and incorporates these types of mechanisms, there is considerable opportunity to protect land to protect water.
Sources
Benedict, M. E.T. McMahon. 2006. Green Infrastructure: Linking Landscapes and Communities. Island Press, Washington.
Manderson, Chris. April 25, 2007a. Community Services and Utilities & Environmental Protection Report to the SPC on Utilities and Environment: Environmental Reserve Setbacks: UE2007-15. City of Calgary.
