Land-use battles subject of forum at MM2000

Competing interests in the land-use battle were explored in a recent forum titled “Land-use battles: will they ever end?”, at Mining Millennium 2000, a Toronto conference jointly sponsored by the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) and the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM).

Moderator Ian Thomson, a geologist and consultant specializing in social risk management, told delegates that the seeds of the land-use debate were sown around 1969 with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the growing political influence of indigenous peoples. Understanding their views is an important first step in resolving land-use debates, he said.

Monte Hummel, president of World Wildlife Fund Canada, was unequivocal about the three principles dear to the hearts of environmentalists: “First, the best use of some land is to leave it alone; two, there is no God-given right to explore or develop everywhere forever; and three, no mining in parks.”

Hummel criticized the PDAC for “wavering” on its commitement to the Whitehorse Mining Initiative (WMI), which, he said, acknowledged that there should be no mining in representative protected areas. “The PDAC appears to have shifted ground from accepting no mining in parks, as in the WMI, in favour of zoning parks to allow mining, despite overwhelming public opposition.”

Still, Hummel believes there are agreed-upon and proven ways of resolving many — “perhaps as much as 80 per cent” — of the problems. Toward this end, he advocated more discussions in the context of partnerships based on trust. “This means getting the right people in a room, leaving the hot heads on both sides behind.”

Hummel also suggested that miners should recognize the values of protected areas, and that environmentalists should appreciate the economic significance of the mining industry, as well as the genuine efforts made to improve its environmental performance. “I’ve often suggested that such an excercise should begin with the miners suggesting where the parks should be, and the environmentalists suggesting where the mines should be.”

While that last comment had some delegates scratching their heads, most appeared to agree with Hummel’s observation that land-use planning has worked best in Manitoba, because areas known to have high mineral potential were not included in areas proposed for protection.

“It is just not accurate to depict land-use issues as always being a death struggle, always being at each other’s throats, always disagreeing,” Hummel concluded. “Instead, where there’s a will, there’s a way.” As for the question of whether land-used battles will ever end, he was non-commital. “That depends on the combatants.”

Hans Matthews, president of the Canadian Aboriginal Minerals Association, provided an overview of the evolving relationship between the mining industry and aboriginal communities. “It used to be a case of aboriginal participation in mining,” he said. “Now it’s mining company participation in the aboriginal community.”

Matthews said native communities consider themselves empowered because of land-claim agreements but that these same agreements have created uncertainty for resource developers. However, community consent for major projects can be obtained through partnerships featuring joint research and management, tax-sharing, and training programs. “Efforts should be directed toward implementing agreements, preserving and promoting cultures, community empowerment and mineral industry services.”

Walter Segsworth, president of Homestake Canada, then took the podium to explain what had gone wrong with British Columbia’s land-use planning initiatives. He began by admiting his own bias: “Although I pledged to the process significant assets of the company I was with at the time, I had grave misgivings about its outcome. Ensuing events have confirmed my worst fears. The people of the province have lost and continue to lose the economic productivity of huge amounts of resource lands. All provincial lands, covered by the process to this point or not, remain mired in uncertainty.”

The process began in 1988 with the stated goal of bringing protected representative areas to 12% of the province’s land base, Segsworth explained. “Other prominent goals were to end valley-by-valley confrontations, to increase certainty, and to provide economic sustainability. Although the land planning process, in all its forms, is now past the mid-point, none of the goals appears to be achievable, except the establishment of protected areas, which threaten to exceed the government’s explicit 12 per cent commitment.”

He provided a chilling chronology of the process to date, including the establishment of the Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE), which trumpeted a shared decision-making process based on environmental, economic and social principles. Its charter stated that the process should be open to all participants and promote “the building of consensus amongst diverse perspectives and stakeholders.”

The words sounded good, Segsworth said, but they didn’t hold up in the real world. “The reality is that [the commission] effectively opened the door to extremist groups, representing a small portion of B.C. public opinion, to take up, at taxpayers’ expense, over half the seats at planning tables. The nature of the participants and the consensus decision-making process ensured dysfunctional outcomes.”

CORE “lost its innocence early,” Segsworth explained, when it “bowed to foreign-funded political pressure and orchestated the economically devastating decision to kill the Windy Craggy mine project [in northern British Columbia] and sterilize the region’s mineral potential by creating Tatshenshini-Alsek Park.”

The regional planning tables didn’t fare any better. In some cases, where extremists had taken over the tables and where consensus was not possible, CORE had to step in and complete the process itself.

In 1994, public outrage over the process triggered a 25,000-person “yellow-ribbon parade” of loggers, miners and rural residents, which, in turn, led to the demise of CORE. The process was then assigned to planning tables in more than 20 separate sub-regions, or, in Segsworth’s words, “a whole bunch of little COREs.”

Things went from bad to worse, he said. “Finally, in January 1999, after many years of exhausting and costly participation in B.C.’s land-planning process and following a call by the B.C. Business Summit to stop the process and conduct an independent socio-economic audit of the decisions, the mining sector elected to withdraw from direct participation the process.” This was not done as a protest, he added, but to avoid the muzzling imposed by the tables and to allow realistic solutions to be discussed in an open enviromment.

Segsworth said the industry has two simple recommendations to government and communities concerned about mining’s decline: first, that government not exceed its 12% parks commitment, even if that means cutting back on over-represented areas; and second, that a 2-zone model be adopted for mining purposes. This would prevent mining in protected areas, leaving the remaining regions open for resource activities subject to existing regulations.

What went wrong in B.C., he concluded, “was that the process had too few rules, and even those were not adhered to. Participation is open to anyone with the remotest interest and with nothing to lose.”

The clear, scientifically based criteria that the B.C. government agreed to respect in WMI was “nowhere to be seen,” he added. “The result has been a dismal failure from a standpoint of our industry and for the economic well-being of the province. B.C’s proportion of mining investment has lanquished far behind that of our competitors, and that is attributable to the complete lack of certainty caused by the land-use planning process.”

Most delegates, including, Monte Hummel, agreed that WMI had been less than satisfactory in providing a framework to resolve land-use debates, with the possible exceptions of Manitoba and Quebec. “It was largely unimplemented,
” Hummel said. “There wasn’t enough emphasis placed, by the mining industry, on what it means.”

Segsworth had a different view. “I fault the government more than any of the groups in WMI. The government was the only organization that could implement it, and they disappeared after the document was signed.”

Despite the many challenges, most delegates said they expect land-used battles will end, or at least be reduced, in the years ahead.