Implications on Land and Resource Use of Overlapping Land Use Plans

The system of national, provincial, district and municipal plans and legislature that overlap with WTG lands and waters has the potential to produce unexpected constraints on traditional use, economic development or habitat viability. We call these unexpected effects cumulative effects. Our review suggests that, although possible, cumulative effects situations should be increasingly unusual because planning in BC is becoming more and more hierarchical and centralised.

This report explores in detail some of the constraints and opportunities that come from the current planning regime in British Columbia. It also provides examples of combinations of planning factors that may create unexpected or at least undesirable effects on WTG lands. These are the situations where cumulative should be watched for in the future. And we describe a GIS methodology for further exploring cumulative effects using more detailed spatial data and spatial modeling.