Alberta and other western provinces need new policies that protect land and water or risk losing this cherished “natural capital,” says an oilpatch veteran and author of a Canada West Foundation paper on the issue.

Barry Worbets, a senior fellow at Canada West, says the oft-touted Alberta Advantage includes careful tracking of sub-surface natural resources such as oil, gas and coal and the economic wealth they generate.

But Alberta and other western provinces need to balance their emphasis on assets beneath the ground by valuing and safeguarding the natural capital on the surface, says Worbets, whose 30-plus years in the oil and gas industry included managing health, safety and environmental issues at Husky Energy Ltd.

“One of the most important issues for Western Canada is how to keep our human capital in the area, how we can attract and maintain people staying here,” he says.

Canada West’s Barry Worbets

“Of course you can stay here for the economic opportunities, but you choose to live here for the quality of life.”

Worbets, whose Canada West Foundation paper is to be released Aug. 26, says the West’s natural capital includes protected parks and wilderness. But it also encompasses urban and rural “working landscapes” – from the natural and created green spaces in cities to the open range of ranches and grain fields.

Natural capital also includes precious surface water resources and river valleys with recreational pathways. Alberta, with its original Eastern Slopes Policy in the mid-1970s, led North America in land-use planning that balanced economic growth with community goals and environmental protection, Worbets notes.

British Columbia borrowed the best of Alberta’s policies and applied them to their “Super-Natural” province, he says.

“I’d say that today B.C. is doing a better job (than Alberta) around land-use planning,” he adds. “It’s really time for our province . . . to focus on land and water.”

David Luff, vice-president of stewardship and public affairs at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, says he likes Worbets’ paper.

“It’s a great first step in looking at and identifying some of the issues that people have talked about for a number of years, in trying to find the right balance between social, economic and conservation values,” Luff says.

He’s hoping that Worbets’ framework for discussion will create an opportunity for governments and all stakeholders in Western Canada to find common ground on the value of natural capital.

Some landscapes should be protected from development, while other areas need to be working landscapes that allow oil and gas, logging, ranching, recreational and other activities, Luff says. “There’s a blend that’s required, and it’s a matter of finding that blend or that balance.”

Worbets’ views echo those in a report in June to Alberta Environment Minister Lorne Taylor by a government-appointed regional advisory committee.

That report, The Northern East Slopes: Sustainable Resource and Environmental Management Strategy, calls for new co-ordinated, non-adversarial land-management policies that allow natural resource development while still protecting the environment, wildlife and other natural values.

Worbets argues that too much expertise in both the public and private sectors has been shifted from land, water and health-related air-quality issues to matters he and other experts consider to be less pressing – such as the Kyoto accord on climate change.

“Land, water and air quality as it relates to the health of our people is way more important than carbon dioxide emissions,” he says.

Worbets plans to spend the next few months discussing his ideas with industry leaders, government officials, ranchers and farmers, city officials and planners, and others.

“We’ve got it 80-per-cent right” in Alberta and Western Canada when it comes to managing our natural capital, Worbets says.

“But having it 20-per-cent wrong can create some huge problems.”