The Montreal Metropolitan Community (CMM) is committed to protecting 30% of its territory by 2030 in order to ensure the protection of a greater number of natural environments on its territory, which is partly threatened by the sprawl urban. An ambitious goal for the CMM, whose efforts to protect green spaces have led to an outcry from real estate developers in recent months.
The CMM’s target thus sticks to one of the key objectives that the 15th United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP15) aims to achieve, which is being held these days in Montreal, namely that of protecting 30% of land and the planet’s seas by 2030. The MWC’s announcement also comes on the very day of the Great March for the Living, which will take the streets of Montreal by storm on Saturday afternoon.
Last April, the CMM’s use of interim control regulations to protect natural environments – including several golf courses in the metropolitan area – enabled it to achieve a conservation rate of 23.3%. The authority, which represents the 82 municipalities of the greater Montreal region, must therefore protect another 7.7% of a vast territory in the midst of a real estate boom to reach its new target.
To achieve this objective, several municipalities of the CMM are busy acquiring green spaces on their territory. The City of Laval notably announced on Friday the acquisition of 25 hectares in the Saint-François wood, while the City of Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville undertook this Saturday to protect the 19 hectares of the Sabourin woods, where especially found in wetlands.
“For 50 years, 70% of wildlife has disappeared on a planetary scale. It is enormous. We must therefore take strong, rapid and concrete action to reduce the threats to biodiversity by raising our objectives for the protection of green and blue spaces, ”said the mayor of Montreal and president of the CMM, Valérie Plante, in a press release. issued on Saturday. “It is not only our quality of life and our ability to cope with the impacts of climate change that depend on it, but it is also the life of our children and the generations that will follow”, she adds.
The CMM also wishes to create a network of metropolitan parks, in particular by acquiring and converting former golf courses. However, the organization has been faced in recent months with a succession of lawsuits before the Superior Court of Quebec from companies and real estate developers opposed to the protection of certain green spaces that they would like to develop.
Earlier this week, the government of François Legault took advantage of the opening of COP15 to announce an investment of $650 million to ensure the protection of 30% of its territory by 2030. Currently, approximately 17% of the territory of the province is protected. Most of the conserved areas are in northern Quebec, which is less urbanized.
“I congratulate the CMM for its vision and I am very happy to know that it will join its efforts with those of the Quebec government to increase the area of protected areas in southern Quebec, a highly urbanized area where there is more more difficult to act in this direction, “thus reacted by means of a press release on Saturday the Quebec Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette.