Redefining Conservation, Or Waste And Duplication?

Redefining Conservation is the Ontario Environmental Commissioner's annual report for 2009/ 2010. The report is full of good advice on the usual themes, including the chronic shortage of resources for environmental protection, the many ways that our land use planning fails to protect habitat and species, and the need for much greater commitment to energy conservation. The ECO's persistent needling has provoked the Ministry of the environment to take some much-needed action, such as making a list of old, poorly regulated landfill sites (at least now they have a list) and starting to think about climate change in its standards for stormwater management (they don't have a list of stormwater systems, or an assessment of how they will cope with climate change). But the list of other things the MOE should be doing just continues to grow.