Balancing Nature Conservation ‘Needs’ and Those of Other Land Uses in a Multi-Functional Context: High-Value Nature Conservation Sites in Lowland England

This chapter examines two particular environmental programmes in Canada, one in the Atlantic provinces and one in Ontario, with a view to assessing how the process of 'bottom up' planning has worked in these two instances and what lessons may be learned about the long-term sustainability of the actions incorporated within the two case study schemes. The Atlantic Coastal Action Program (ACAP) is one of five regional ecosystem-based initiatives developed by Environment Canada in the 1990s as best examples of how sustainable development might be achieved through a combination of economic, environmental and community-based components. The second Canadian example of a bottom-up environmental scheme to be discussed here is an agri-environmental scheme formally launched in 1993, the Ontario Environmental Farm Plan (EFP). Surveys of participants in the scheme revealed various positive responses to the EFP in terms of its influence on increasing awareness of farm conservation issues, its educational value and the identification of potential environmental risks.