Land use policies must promote sustainable development and respect ecology.
Unlimited growth on a finite planet cannot be sustained.
There is a fundamental difference between growth and development and between quantity and quality. Rather than exploiting the Earth for short-term gain, We should believe in living in sustainable balance with it. Land use practices must be founded on stewardship of the Earth, to honor the interconnected and interdependent nature of all life, to respect ecosystems and other species, while at the same time providing for human needs in a responsible and sustainable way.
Only an economics that is based upon environmental health is sustainable.
SOLUTIONS
Land ownership and property rights
- Insist that every property right has an implied responsibility to provide for the common good of people, places and the planet.
- Encourage the formation and operation of cooperatives, non-profits, land trusts, co-housing, and other forms of communal and public interest management of land and resources.
Urban land use - Promote livable urban environments to minimize urban sprawl. Promote urban infill with affordable housing, mass transit, schools, jobs, health care, public spaces, bicycle and walking paths, community gardens, open spaces, parks, playgrounds, and urban growth boundaries.
- Green our cities with green belts, energy-efficient infill, distributed solar and wind generation, gray water systems, under grounding of wires and pipelines, redevelopment of brown fields, closed loop, energy-producing sewage systems, watershed protection and urban agriculture.
- Restore damaged urban ecosystems.
- Consider the carrying capacities of the bioregions in which our cities are located and attempt to match urban populations to these natural limitations.
- Support environmental justice policies that give communities a voice in planning future development with the goal of preventing concentration of polluting industries and practices in poor and/or minority communities.
Rural land use - Preserve and expand rural land use patterns that promote open space, healthy ecosystems, wildlife corridors and the ecologically sustainable agriculture. Protect and expand large continuous tracts of public and private land for wildlife habitat and biological diversity, to permit healthy, self-managing wildlife populations to exist in a natural state, and to promote complete ecosystems.
- Promote livable rural communities to minimize urban migration.
- Transition rural communities into sustainable relationships with ranching, agriculture, forestry and mining.
- Reward farmers and ranchers for the ecosystem services they provide on private and public lands. Favor policies that promote mall-scale farmers and ranchers over large-scale corporate agriculture and ranching.
Public Lands - Repeal the General Mining Law of 1872.
- Enact mining reforms to better balance mining with other important public land uses; provide a fair financial return to taxpayers for resources extracted, and create a fund for clean up of abandoned mines. Enact tough new environmental safeguards to protect against mining pollution, including strict curbs on mercury emissions from metal mines.
Eliminate public subsidies for livestock grazing on public lands. Raise grazing fees on public land to approximate fair market value. - Oppose the sale of any portion our national parks, forests or coastlines. Fund and maintain public lands in a healthy and productive state. Oppose commercial privatization of the management of these lands.
- Ensure public ownership of natural resources located on public lands. Halt federal mineral, oil and gas, and resource giveaways, “royalty holidays,” and flagrant concessions to the mining, energy and timber industries on public lands.
- Restore and remediate damaged ecosystems on public lands.
- Protect old growth forests, ban clear cutting and ban industrial timber harvest on public lands. Minimize road building on public lands.
- Ban indiscriminate wildlife “damage control practices” and abolish Wildlife Services.
Source: Green Party
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Green Party Platform on the Issues
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