An Ecosystem Health Perspective relevant to Salt Spring Island\\\'s OCP review - David Rapport

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An Ecosystem Health Perspective 
relevant to Salt Spring Island's OCP 
review
 
 
Prepared by: 
 
David J. Rapport 
Ecohealth Consulting 
217 Baker Road 
Salt Spring Island 
V8K 2N6  
 
With a contribution from: 
 
Luisa Maffi 
Ecohealth Consulting 
217 Baker Road 
Salt Spring Island  
V8K 2N6 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
Submitted to: Islands Trust, Victoria BC 
 
Submission Date 27 February 2007 
 
Re Contract Number 2614 
 
 
1

1. What constitutes Ecosystem Health on Salt Spring Island? 
 
In a world in which everything is changing, the concept of “sustainability” may appear to 
be a paradox. Yet it has been a central feature of environmental and social planning, ever 
since the World Commission on Environment and Development released its report Our 
Common Future two decades ago (1). At that time, there was growing concern about a 
world coming out of balance—that population pressures, combined with powerful 
resource extractive and polluting technologies, would severely compromise global and 
regional environments. At the same time, it was accepted that economic development was 
essential if the basic needs (water, food, shelter, clothing, jobs) of the world’s population 
were to be met.  Thus the Commission had as its major objective the proposing of “long-
term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development” by the year 2000.  
Its key contribution was the notion of  “sustainable development”— that is, 
“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of 
future generations to meet their own needs”.  The short prescription for achieving this has 
been described as “living off the interest without depleting the capital”.   
 
The mandate given to the Islands Trust is to “preserve and protect the trust area and its 
unique amenities and environment” (2). The Islands Trust Act (1974) was visionary – it 
recognized, a decade before the World Commission on Environment and Development 
was established, that growing urban population pressures in Southwestern British 
Columbia were beginning to threaten the unique environment and rural character of the 
Southern Gulf Islands, and that the Islands should accordingly be given special protection 
in efforts to prevent erosion of these unique features (3).  
 
In order to “preserve and protect” our unique environment and its rural character, what is 
required is to maintain our ecosystems in a state of good health. Healthy ecosystems are 
those that maintain their full range of functions – that is, they maintain their 
organization 
(their capacity to sustain the biodiversity that is characteristic of this relatively dry 
“Mediterranean type” vegetation zone, typical of the islands of the Strait of Georgia and 
Haro Strait); they maintain their resilience, or capacity to rebound from periodic 
disturbance, such as wind storms, fire, and other natural perturbations; and they maintain 
their 
productivity, i.e. their capacity to transform solar energy into biomass, r

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