There are truly limits to living on an island, but carrying capacity is only half the conversation

Tobi Elliott, Trustee for Gabriola and Vice-Chair of the Islands Trust

Views expressed are my own and do not represent the Islands Trust.

Trust Council asked the Minister responsible for the Islands Trust for a legislative review in October 2024. Minister Kahlon’s reply was to refuse the request, to urge Council to continue engaging with our partners and First Nations in the Policy Statement work, and, “to manage expectations of growth, development and local economies without exceeding the carrying capacity of local ecosystems and preserving unspoiled natural amenities.”

The Minister’s statement is an invitation to a conversation about real limits. But limits on what? There is a limit to many of the physical assets for life on the gulf islands: transportation capacity, arable land for food production, and finite reserves of groundwater. Land use planning is about understanding the healthy limits of natural ecosystems, and how that interacts with the amenities needed by people living on the land.

The Trust is very much engaged in this critical work. One example is Gabriola island piloting a Freshwater Footprint project. We are using the latest science to map groundwater, critical recharge areas, and saltwater intrusion vulnerabilities. We are monitoring how residents, and industry use groundwater, in order to develop a water balance that will direct the future use and intensity of development on the island.

I am cautious about the utility of the term “carrying capacity”. I have yet to find evidence that it is a real science, or that it’s useful in modern land use planning. Sayre (2008) traces the origins of “carrying capacity” through four main phases. The term first emerged in the 1700s in international shipping to calculate the transport of manufactured objects on ships, now called ‘payload’. In the 1870s it was used in range and game management practices to determine the capacity of range lands to support herds of animals. Post-war alarmism on overpopulation and environmental collapse revived it in family-planning programs, as governments tested population control as a route to sustainability.

Cohen (1995) defined carrying capacity as “the maximum population size that can be sustained indefinitely by the available resources.” However, in human systems this limit is dynamic, shaped by: technology (e.g., irrigation, crops), economics (trade, market access) and culture (consumption patterns). The limits of carrying capacity’s utility in land use planning are due to the need for a predictable, stable set of inputs from which a formula for liveability can be derived: X + Y resources—human use = K (people).

Humans are not units with defined needs and habits and behaviours, like a herd of elk. An island is not a cargo hold, a range land, or a Petrie dish. We live in a dynamic, globalized system in which over 90% of our food is imported. We have already exceeded the capacity the island has in “available resources” to sustain the present population indefinitely. But that is not just because of population. It’s because our needs, tastes, habits and culture are out of sync with the land’s rhythms.

Defining the upper limit of what that land can support presupposes we can determine a threshold that meets everyone’s needs and lifestyles. It also diverts us from the conversation we need to have about what limits we might need on islanders’ lifestyles. 

It is neither feasible nor desirable to regulate through population and density caps. Here’s why: prior to contact, there were greater numbers of Coast Salish people living, feasting, sharing and thriving on the lands and water than there are today in the Trust Area. Because of their way of life, they created capacity on the land. Coast Salish peoples actively managed the great cedar forests, sequestering carbon, strengthening the clam, marine life and camas stocks. Art and culture flourished because they partnered with the natural ecosystems to create an abundance of food.

That intimate relationship was interrupted with land pre-emption. Industry, forestry and homesteading practices rapidly replaced the natural ecosystems with water-intensive, Euro-centric modes of farming and living. A significant village site of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on False Narrows was called Tle:1txw [rich or special place] with long houses, burial grounds, massive middens. Elders are quoted in Littlefield (2000) talking about how critical this productive clam bed was to Snuneymuxw’s survival. An estimate puts the population of Snuneymuxw ancestors here at around 5,000 by the mid-1700s. In less than 100 years, the population dropped to approx. 1,000 (Littlefield, 2000). The population of Gabriola now is approx. 4,500.

I take issue with the Minister’s charge that the Trust should “preserve unspoiled natural amenities”. I agree we must protect the natural environment, but this assertion these areas are “unspoiled” is problematic. When the Islands Trust was enacted fifty years ago, its main purpose was to slow down and manage previously unchecked growth and development. Now, we have more lavender fields than camas meadows. Compared to what these islands once were, they have been spoiled through the Crown and commerce’s appetite for wood, sandstone, gravel, and prime real estate. What standard of natural amenities should we now preserve? Do we cap the islands at today’s current threshold of consumption?

Regional districts and Islands Trust undertake land use planning, not social engineering. We don’t get to decide who can live here. Limits to our appetites will be more effective than density caps. Attempting to define some imaginary upper limit of capacity of the islands puts the responsibility on the environment to carry humans. A much harder conversation to have is with ourselves: how many luxury homes, vs small homes, homes for elders and workforce housing? How could potable water be better managed for household use? What limits are we willing to accept, so the land is not just supporting us, but may actually benefit from our presence?

I urge my fellow islanders into a deeper dialogue than “carrying capacity”. The urgency of reconciliation, climate change and the impacts of capitalism’s excesses charge island communities to think more deeply than about the human payload the land is asked to bear. A reciprocal, mutual responsibility to the land requires us to think deeply, act differently, and moderate our expectations for how we can live on the land. We must leave these islands healthier and more resilient than they were when we arrived: places where ecosystems and humans alike both flourish.

Cohen, J.E. “How Many People Can the Earth Support?”. W.W. Norton & Co. 1995.

Littlefield, L, The Snunéymuxw village at False Narrows, SHALE 1, pp.3–11, Nov. 2000.

Sayre, N. “The Genesis, History, and Limits of Carrying Capacity”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 2008.

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