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Integrated Resource Management (IRM)

In September 2000 the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) proposed its long term Integrated Resource Management (IRM) land use plan for Nova Scotia's public lands. See the plan.

IRM is a long-term land use planning exercise to determine future uses of Nova Scotia's publicly-owned Crown lands. About 28% of the province's land base, including nearly 12 000km2 of unprotected public land, was on the table.

The IRM plan failed to designate or even nominate any new sites for protection despite widespread public support for doing so. Even worse, it actually appears to block any new designations of crown land for protection. The public was justifiably outraged. In March of 2001, a group of over 100 eminent scientists condemned IRM and asked Premier John Hamm to scrap the plan. (See: Scientists' Statement of Concern)

Despite all of this, DNR minister Ernie Fage approved the plan, as is, without any debate in the house or any further input from stakeholders. Plans are now underway at DNR to beginning implementing the IRM plan on Crown land across the province.

IRM Classifications:

The IRM process split Nova Scotia into three planning regions:

Western Region: Kings, Annapolis, Digby, Yarmouth, Shelburne, Queens, and Lunenburg Counties
Central Region: Halifax, Hants, Cumberland, and Colchester Counties
Eastern Region: Guysborough, Antigonish, and Pictou Counties, and Cape Breton Island
Click here to view the plan

For each region, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) appointed a planning team of government staff to produce a regional land use plan. These teams have assigned every parcel of Crown land into one of three land use classifications that either allow resource extraction or offer limited protection.

The three categories as described by IRM*, with our comments in italics:

Category 1 Lands: General Resource Use.

"Crown lands assigned to this category will be available for the full range of resource uses."

Anything goes on these lands - they will be available for clearcutting, new logging roads, highways, mining, etc., or they could be sold to private interests.

Category 2 Lands: Multiple and Adaptive Resource Use.

"Within this category of lands, the full range of land/resource uses may be permitted, but they must be planned in such a way as to protect the integrity of predominant values which may be impacted by others uses."

Category 2 sounds good, but allowing the "full range of land/resource uses" with only a vague assurance to protect the "integrity of predominant values", means that these lands will be managed very much like Category 1 lands. Category 2 lands are available for clearcutting, new logging roads, highways, mining, etc., or they could be sold to private interests. For example, in 2002 the Province approved an open pit quartz mine within Category 2 lands only a few short meters from the Tobeatic Wilderness Area.

Category 3 Lands: Protected and Limited Use.

"This category includes lands that are specifically allocated to special uses and where other resource activities may be very limited, modified, or denied."

Nearly all lands tagged as Category 3 lands under the IRM plan were pre-existing Wilderness Areas or Provincial Parks, whose status does not change. Less than 1% of remaining lands were classed Category 3. These parcels are intended to be off limits for industrial resource development, but generally available for outdoor recreation. Category 3 land which is not formally protected as a Wilderness Area, Special Place or Provincial Park can be reclassified as C1 or C2 at DNR's discretion. A Category 3 designation alone is not binding protection.

DNR announced a proposed plan for each region showing the distribution of land use categories in September 2000.

* excerpts from land use classification guidelines. See: full definitions of IRM Classifications

For more information, also see:

The threat to wilderness

The IRM planning process favours resource extraction over protection. This is because the DNR, which has a resource development mandate, calls all the shots.

Even though large tracts of Crown land require protection to fulfill outstanding provincial wilderness commitments, the Department of the Environment and Labour (DEL), which has a mandate to identify new protected area candidates, has only had an advisory role. Decision making remains solely with DNR. Only one Environment Department representative sat on each regional planning team (These teams prepared draft plans for each of the three planning regions). Everyone else was from DNR. Not surprisingly, DNR's mandate of resource exploitation prevailed in the plan.

The regional IRM planning teams took direction from a committee of senior DNR bureaucrats in Halifax, called the "IRM Land Use Committee". At this level Environment had no representation. Other government departments that have a stake in public lands (e.g., tourism, fisheries, etc.) were absent too. After Natural Resources finished and announced the plan they invited representatives from other government departments to sit on an "intradepartmental IRM advisory committee". This group can bring concerns to DNR's attention but have no decision-making authority.

Unlike for similar processes in Ontario and British Columbia where planning teams included public stakeholders, Nova Scotia's IRM planning teams consisted only of government staff. There are no public seats at the table. They met behind closed doors and did not provide minutes of their meetings. After two years of "planning" in a vacuum DNR announced their proposed plan in September 2000. Both the process and plan have been widely criticized. A major concern about the plan is that it recommends not permitting resource extraction (i.e., Category 3) on less than 1% of currently unprotected Crown lands.

For more information on the IRM plan, visit DNR's web site.