Tackle conflict of interest in forestry head on

Past policies and priorities favouring forestry industry development at all costs are outdated and are neither viable nor tolerable today.

It is long past time for the Nova Scotia government to take the proverbial bull by the horns and deal decisively with the deeply-embedded conflict of interest within the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables (DNRR).

This conflict, of course, is between the department’s unabashed priority on forestry resource development and exploitation and its responsibilities for Crown land management and biodiversity protection.

DNRR’S steadfast promotion of forestry as the predominant use of Crown lands not only lays bare the fundamental conflict within the department’s mandate but also flies in the face of the interests and expectations of Nova Scotians regarding the responsible stewardship of our publicly-owned natural assets.

Persistent public criticism and pressure for reform led to two government-initiated arm’s-length reviews involving forestry and Crown land use issues within the past two decades.

The outcomes, the 2011 natural resources strategy and the 2018 independent review of forest practices (the Lahey report), generally were well-received, with recommendations advanced accepted by government.

However, the department’s organizational culture has proven stubbornly resistant to change, even when directed by the government it serves.

The most recent and stinging indictment of DNRR’S intransigence is provided in Lahey’s follow-up evaluation of progress on implementing ecological forestry, the paradigm shift at the heart of recommended reforms endorsed by the government in December 2018. The November 2021 evaluation report concludes that, three years later, there had been no apparent progress toward improved forestry practices on the ground nor any indication of when substantive change may occur.

According to Yogi Berra, the late-great New York Yankee baseballer and part-time social commentator: “You can observe a lot by just watching!”

With the resources department’s mindset in lock-step with forestry industry interests, it is patently clear that responsibilities for Crown land management and, more broadly, for the protection of biodiversity, wildlife, endangered species and provincial parks, must be transferred to a department or agency with a core mandate for public land stewardship and environmental protection.

Given the current structure of government, the obvious candidate receiving department is the Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC).

The Houston government’s highprofile and all-party-supported Environmental Goals and Climate Change Reduction Act (EGCCRA), passed last fall, offers some hope and opportunity.

On the positive side, EGCCRA’S Section 10 sets Dec. 31, 2023 as the target for completing a collaborative protected areas strategy (to guide the goal of protecting 20 per cent of Nova Scotia’s land and water mass by 2030) and for delineating the triad zoning system on Crown lands (to provide the basic framework within which to implement ecological forestry).

However well-intended, these commitments will not be easily met, owing both to the conflicting mandate within DNRR and to the division of overlapping and competing responsibilities between DNRR and DECC.

Unfortunately, EGCCRA does not recognize (nor did the Lahey report nor the earlier resources strategy) these organizational fault lines as major obstacles to the fulfillment of government’s public land stewardship and biodiversity protection responsibilities. Consider the following disconnects:

■ no mechanism is in place for integrating protected areas planning (by DECC) and Crown land zoning (by DNRR) to enable these overlapping efforts to be complementary rather than competitive;

■ while protected areas planning and Crown land zoning are underway, there is no provision in place to ensure ongoing forestry operations avoid areas of potential conservation interest;

■ the triad zoning system, intended as the guiding framework for ecological forestry, does not consider the full range of potential uses of Crown land, beyond forestry, that are in the broader public interest; and

■ the role of Crown land use planning (as set out in the spring 2021 amendments to the Crown Lands Act), in co-ordinating where and how various uses can and should occur, has been overlooked or ignored.

In the absence of greater clarity and coherency regarding departmental mandates and responsibilities, the implementation of Lahey will continue to founder. Crown land overuse and abuse, industrially or otherwise, will go on largely unabated. And the province’s obligations respecting public land stewardship and biodiversity protection will remain unfulfilled. Times have changed.

Past policies and priorities favouring forestry industry development at all costs are outdated and are neither viable nor tolerable today. Forests no longer can be considered merely as a raw material input to industry. Natural ecosystems, including our forests, are now widely recognized as the foundation upon which all life on earth ultimately depends and therefore must be protected and used sustainably.

Surely, the transfer of primary responsibility for public land stewardship and biodiversity protection from DNRR to DECC must be acted on with urgency as an essential step forward that is practical, pragmatic and prudent.

Indeed, it is long past time to relieve the fox of the keys to the henhouse.