Environment & Sustainability Policy
Environment policy from the 2007 Green Book
:
- Implement groundwater monitoring to provide reliable information on water quality and levels in aquifers and their variability.
- Start monitoring water withdrawals from industry and irrigation.
- Begin to collect and analyze regional health care data looking for abnormal health trends so as to identify any environmental causes within the region.
- Ban the cosmetic use of pesticides.
- Create new provincial parks to aid in conservation efforts.
- Increase the province’s recycling capacity by investing in new recycling centers and developing an efficient rural recycling collection program.
- Begin a cumulative impact assessment of all oil and gas activity in the province to understand the impact this industry has on our wildlife, vegetation and residents.
- Require that before a permit for a new oil or gas well is granted, the company has decommissioned and reclaimed an inactive oil or gas well.
Environment & Sustainability Resolutions 1998-2011:
2011.1 Research centre of excellence for bio?diversity
Be it resolved that the Green Party of Saskatchewan support the development of a research centre of excellence for bio?diversity in the province of Saskatchewan.
2011.2 Maintaining the native biodiversity of Saskatchewan ecosystems
Be it resolved: To ensure that adequate habitat is maintained for well?distributed and viable populations of all existing native species, Green MLAs will implement the following four fundamental objectives that are consistent with the overarching goal of maintaining the native biodiversity:
- Maintain all native ecosystem types and seral stages across their natural range of variation
- Maintain viable populations of all native species in natural patterns of abundance and distribution
- Maintain ecological and evolutionary processes, such as disturbance regimes, hydrological processes, nutrient cycles, and biotic interactions, including predation
- Design mitigation and management recommendations that are responsive to short?term and long?term environmental change and to maintain the evolutionary potential of lineages.
2006.9 Apply precautionary principle to nano-technology
Be it resolved that before the release or introduction of any nano-particles into consumer products or nature, a full environmental / health impact assessment be conducted on each nanotechnology creation to determine if it could have negative impacts.
2005.18 Deposit on plastic bags required
Be it Resolved that the GPS will develop and implement legislation to initiate a mandatory environmental deposit of 25 cents on every new plastic bag distributed in Saskatchewan. The funds generated by this deposit will be used to develop plastic bag reduction, collection, re-use, and recycling information, services, and programs across the province
2004.5 Enforce environmental protection laws
Be it resolved that a Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will review our justice system to ensure that laws will be enforced that protect citizens and the environment, and where inadequate laws exist, new measures will be legislated.
2003.5 Water rights
BE IT RESOLVED that the Green Party of Saskatchewan supports the rights of the citizens of Saskatchewan and the world by declaring that:
- water is a common heritage of human kind, and therefore
- earth’s fresh water belongs to all living species and therefore must not be treated as a commodity to be bought, sold and traded for profit as an economic good.
- local human communities have the primary responsibility to guarantee that water is treated as a common heritage.
- water is a fundamental human and social right, and therefore
- the right to water in quantity and quality sufficient to life is an individual and collective inalienable right which cannot be submitted to any constraint of social (sex, age, income) political, religious or financial nature.
- the cost to satisfy such a right for all must be financed by the collectivity.
- water is essential to the security of our communities and societies and therefore,
- its ownership, control, delivery and management belong in the public domain.
- citizens must be at the heart of the decision process in water affairs.
- water management policies must ensure social equity such as gender equity, public health and environmental equity.
(From a United Nations Declaration on Water Rights)
2003.9 Forests and Forestry to be certified by Forest Stewardship Council
BE IT RESOLVED that the Green Party of Saskatchewan supports a process that will result in all of Saskatchewan’s Crown forests and forest products achieving certification by the Forest Stewardship Council of Canada,
and that all Crown forest operation license holders be required to follow operation procedures compliant with these certification standards in all of their forest operations within Saskatchewan.
2003.31 Selective logging rather than clear-cut logging in forest harvest
BE IT RESOLVED that the practice of clear cut logging, where the natural forest is destroyed and replaced with a monoculture forest which is unsuitable for many of the plants and animals which need a natural forest for habitat, be replaced with selective logging, which is compatible with the natural ecosystem.
2002.9 Support for class action law suit against GE pollution
BE IT RESOLVED that the Green Party of Saskatchewan actively support the suit by the Saskatchewan Organic Directorate against Monsanto Canada and Aventis Canada for compensation for damages to crops and markets by the introduction of genetically engineered canola.
The Green Party of Saskatchewan strongly supports the right of farmers to grow organic crops, the right to farm organically, the right to serve organic markets, and the right of consumers to eat food that is not genetically engineered.
2001.4 Recycling
RESOLVED that the Green Party of Saskatchewan support a ban on disposal of recyclables and encourage strong the recycling of such useful material in Saskatchewan and elsewhere.
2000.11 Stop Export of Bulk Water
BE IT RESOLVED that the Green Party of Saskatchewan legislate no new interbasin transfers of water or the bulk purchase of water for the purpose of export outside Saskatchewan.
2000.12 Environmental Monitoring & Compliance
RESOLVED that the Green Party of Saskatchewan place Environmental Monitoring & Compliance higher on its priorities and that more money, people and energy be put into making sure all data is collected, regulations are complied with and that efforts are made to clean up current environmental liabilities.
2000.14 Support for Endangered Spaces Program
RESOLVED that the Green Party of Saskatchewan would support and work with other organizations for the designation and legislative protection for these lands, and that the Dore-Smoothstone Area be one of those first designated protected areas.
2000.15 Halt to Bear Baiting
RESOLVED that the Green Party of Saskatchewan support a ban on bear baiting in the province.
1999.5 Fluoridation
The Green Party of Saskatchewan takes the position that medicating the entire population through the water supply, especially with a controversial compound of dubious origins, is unwise and undemocratic.
The Green Party of Saskatchewan resolves: That the government direct the Department of Environment to detect and measure environmental fluorides and to trace them back to their sources.
1999.10 Resource Extraction
The Green Party of Saskatchewan offers the following proposal:
That provincial infrastructure and other subsidies to multi-national mining and oil companies cease, and that any provincial involvement in these industries be dictated by the results of rigorous environmental impact studies and the net economic benefits returned to the people of Saskatchewan. Public debt would be measured against the royalty and taxation revenues from these sectors, as well as the benefits of similar public spending in other sectors.
1988.3 Clearcut logging
Be it resolved that the Green Party of Saskatchewan oppose clearcut logging.
Be it further resolved that the Green Party of Saskatchewan work to preserve the Dore Smoothstone area.
Be it further resolved that the Green Party of Saskatchewan work to create jobs for the unemployed forestry workers and others in the commercial forest region of Saskatchewan through the development of value-added businesses.
