The greenbelt movement in the greater Montreal area was launched last week. It brings together a number of environmental organizations, including the David Suzuki Foundation.
The objective of a greenbelt is to ensure a minimum level of protection around the City of Montreal by making room for 17% of natural environments in the metropolitan area. This project involves natural environments, as well as farmlands and waterways. Since Montreal is an island on the St. Lawrence River, we cannot forget the waterway. It is a given. The goal is to work on protecting those environments by granting them protection status to secure a certain percentage of natural environments. At the same time, we want those places to be accessible from urban areas. So we want to make sure that the people who live in the greater Montreal area have access to nature.
We are told that, in previous years, it used to take Montrealers 20 minutes to be in nature. Now it takes them an hour on average. The purpose of a greenbelt is to curb urban sprawl. One of the best examples I use is the greenbelt in London, the first one in the world. But, unfortunately, it is like a doughnut. The city is surrounded by it and that is not what we want to have in Montreal. We want to set up a network of natural environments and work on connecting them, because that makes it possible for flora and fauna species to spread out and migrate. That is something we are going to set up because we can do that around Montreal.
We seek to curb urban sprawl and to achieve environmental sustainability.