Why youth are at the heart of the Peel protest

If you haven’t heard the latest on the Peel, here’s the lowdown: on January 21, 2014, the Yukon Government released its land-use plan for the Peel Watershed. The Peel River Planning Commission, which was formed in 2011 to gather public opinion, showed overwhelming support for protecting the region, and recommended that 80% of the Peel Watershed stay protected. The Yukon Government’s took that recommendation, which they spent $1.6 million and over five years developing, and announced that their plan would protect only 29%.

 

The reaction was swift: the Tr’ondek Hwech’in, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society Yukon, the Yukon Conservation Society, and the Nacho Nyak Dun announced their plan to sue the territorial government over its decision on Monday, and during the lunch hour of January 29, 2014, hundreds of people gathered in Whitehorse and in the Yukon’s communities to protest the government’s decision.

 

People at yesterday’s protest in Whitehorse expressed that they are worried about what it means for the democratic process when a government can go against a recommendation that’s supposed to reflect the public voice. They’re also worried about what the plan means for the future generations. Out of all those who spoke at yesterday’s protest in Whitehorse—elders and representatives from First Nations and Inuvialuit from across the Yukon and NWT, old-timers, and recent émigrés to the Yukon—the message seems to be the same: we need to protect the Peel for future generations; for our children, and for our children’s children.

 

Realistically, the government’s proposed land-use plan does not mean that mines will spring up in the Peel Watershed tomorrow. Infrastructure in the region is sparse, and even if exploration occurs within the next few years, the costs of building roads, shipping equipment, and providing the supplies needed to begin a mine site are usually enough to scare away most companies from going ahead with such a risky project. But with climate change, growing global populations, increasing demand for minerals and natural resources, will this always be the case? Will the Peel Watershed be protected by its remoteness forever?

 

Although the territorial government’s decision may not necessarily lead to mining activity in the next five years, or maybe ten, there’s no telling what could happen in twenty years, or thirty, or forty. What is certain is that the current plan will make development easy and legal in the future, once infrastructure and increased demand makes large mining projects is more feasible. And it will be today’s young people that will deal with those consequences.

 

That’s why youth in particular are so angry about the government’s land-use plan.

 

Whitehorse youth Amaya Cherian-Hall says she strongly supports the Planning Commission’s recommendation, and that the vast majority of Yukoners do too. The only plus-side of the current plan, she says, “is economic—it doesn’t consider nature or any other species on the planet.”

 

Like so many similar issues across the country—fracking on Elsipogtog traditional territory or pipeline proposals across Northern BC, for example—the Peel controversy represents a deep conflict inherent in the global appetite for natural resources and our desire to protect the natural world from effects of resource extraction. At some point, we have to decide what’s more important.

 

At the protest in Whitehorse yesterday, hundreds of people showed that they’re thinking of future generations as they voice their decision. And the youth? It’s their future that they’re defending, and they were out there yesterday showing that they won’t back down.