Alberta’s Land-Use Framework

The Draft Land-use Framework (LUF), released on May 21, 2008, was the result of extensive public and stakeholder consultation. It is a good first step toward the fundamental changes that are needed to fix Alberta’s badly outdated system for land and resource management. LUF implementation will begin in December 2008 with the release of the government’s final policy and implementation plan and the launch of the Northeast Alberta Regional Plan.

The LUF is intended to bring about fundamental changes to the way that the Government of Alberta makes decisions about land and resource use. The Government of Alberta has stated that the LUF “will provide a vision for land use in Alberta and the overall direction needed to manage growth and activities on Alberta’s landscape.” In particular, it is intended to address the following challenges:

• managing growth, mounting land use pressures and cumulative effects
• reconciling competing demands for land
• ensuring sustainability of land use for ourselves and for future generations
• integrating land-use policies

The LUF is an ambitious initiative that raises important implementation issues. Making it Real is an implementation roadmap that recommends actions in six key areas to translate the LUF's positive policy direction into meaningful change.

Many past plans, such as the Alberta Forest Conservation Strategy, the Regional Sustainable Development Strategy for the Athabasca Oil Sands Area, and the Northern East Slopes Strategy, suffered from a lack of government commitment and follow-through, and they were not fully or successfully implemented.

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