Toronto could learn from New York model

How โ€˜greenโ€™ initiatives can also represent money-saving measures

LAST WINTER, AS the federal Finance Department was preparing to spend billions of dollars to stimulate the economy in the face of a global economic meltdown, the David Suzuki Foundation offered its ideas on how to spend the money.

We recommended increased and sustained funding for public transit, subsidies for renewable energy and cash for research and development to green Canada’s auto sector.We also suggested that the government should take a closer look at the economic benefits of protecting our terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems.

We argued that protecting nature results in cost savings for governments because natural areas provide many direct ecological benefits that sustain the health and well-being of our communities at little or no cost. These include services like clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat and flood control. All of these are costly to replace if they are degraded or lost due to mismanagement, assuming they can be replaced at all.

The financial benefits of protecting nature have long been understood. For example, in the early 1990s, New York City chose to protect its watershed through land purchase, pollution control and conservation easements, rather than build new infrastructure to filter its water. In doing so, the city has saved billions of dollars in engineering costs.

Providing clean water at an affordable cost is a challenge in many Canadian cities because few draw their drinking water from protected watersheds. Cities like Toronto and Montreal must rely on expensive treatment systems because the ecosystems from which the water is drawn are already degraded or are tainted by pollution from industrial and agricultural activities and urban runoff.

In comparison, Vancouver’s drinking water comes from protected watersheds in the North Shore Mountains. These mature forests filter, store and regulate Vancouver’s drinking water at no cost to the taxpayer.

A recent joint study by municipal, provincial and federal agencies in B.C. estimated that Vancouver and surrounding communities could save about $1.1 million annually in storm-water infrastructure costs if they significantly increase urban forest cover.

This sort of research is important because policy-makers often ignore the full economic costs of degrading land and the ecological services it provides when making development decisions. For example, in 1973, British Columbia designated good quality farmland in the province as “agricultural land reserve” (ALR) where nonagricultural land use would be strictly controlled.

But the ALR has consistently been degraded by development, under the watch of government.

Successive governments have allowed more than 6,000 hectares of land to be removed for development from the ALR in and around the Vancouver region. It’s time we started looking at the true value of our forests, fields, farmlands and other natural and managed ecosystems beyond just the resources that we take from them.

 Post City Magazines’ environmental columnist, David Suzuki, is the host of the CBC’s The Nature of Things. Dr. Suzuki is also the author of more than 30 books on ecology.

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