Recently Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland referred to the federal government’s plans for a “Green Recovery” in response to the economic downturn created by the Covid crisis.
This presents a first rate opportunity to greatly scale-up the protection of native ecosystems across Canada - as protecting nature is vital for our health, wealth, and survival.
Green Recovery Plans such as that of the European Union typically focus on supporting energy efficiency, clean energy, mass transit, electric vehicles, sustainable agriculture, and a just transition for fossil fuel industry workers into clean industries, among other such important items.
However, central to a true Green Recovery Plan must also be the protection of nature. The protection of our diverse native ecosystems is increasingly being recognized as a fundamental game-changer to help avert both the mass extinction crisis and the climate crisis.
Less intuitive to most is that protecting nature is vital for a prosperous economy, as well as for our collective health.
Numerous studies show that protected areas result in more diverse, resilient, and ultimately more prosperous economies by supporting and attracting a large variety of industries. These include supporting and enhancing:
- Recreation and tourism industries
- Real estate values in communities near protected areas
- Clean water and wild fisheries (commercial and recreational)
- Non-timber forest products (e.g. wild mushrooms, berries, medicinal plants)
- Carbon offsets
- Skilled labour including high tech workers and firms who relocate to areas with a higher environmental quality of life and recreational opportunities.
In addition, nature provides ecosystem services like clean water, natural sewage treatment via wetlands, flood control, regional and global climate regulation, local wild foods, medicines, and genetic stock – without which the costs to society and industry would be astronomical.
The industries supported by protected areas as a whole create greater economic value and jobs than traditional resource extraction, according to various studies.
Not only would protecting nature support a major economic recovery, but it is also vital for our “health” recovery. Numerous studies have shown that nature supports human mental and physical health by reducing stress, emitting compounds (phytoncides from trees and plants) that directly bolster our immune systems, reducing air pollution, and many other ways (see the “More Info” section down below).
As such we are recommending two key federal economic stimulus items regarding the protection of native ecosystems:
1. A Land Acquisition Fund of $2 billion/year to purchase and protect endangered ecosystems including old-growth forests on private lands to sustain biodiversity, clean water, wild fisheries, the climate, recreation, tourism, our quality of life, and a more robust economy;
2. Providing $3 billion/year to expand the protected areas system on Crown (public) lands, including supporting Indigenous Protected Areas via funding to First Nations for land-use planning, stewardship, Indigenous Guardians programs (all currently supported by the federal government) and development of conservation-based economies linked to expanding protected areas (eg. conservation financing for the protection of old-growth forests). This fund would also be used to buy-out various resource permits and licenses, such as logging, mining, and oil and gas rights of companies in candidate protected areas.
Take note that the existing $1.3 billion Canada Nature Fund, allocated from 2018 to 2023, is already designed to fund both private land acquisition and Indigenous Protected Areas. Thus, bolstering this existing fund via a Green Recovery Plan could be the quickest and easiest way in the near term to accomplish the scale-up of nature protection in Canada.
Send a message to Canada’s key politicians:
YOUR MESSAGE WILL BE SENT TO: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Minster of Finance Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Natural Resources Seamus O’Regan, Minister of Health Patty Hajdu, Parliamentary Leader of the Green Party Elizabeth May, Federal Leader of the New Democratic Party Jagmeet Singh, Federal Leader of the Conservative Party Erin O’Toole, Conservative Finance Critic Pierre Poilievre, NDP Finance Critic Peter Julian, NDP Environment and Climate Change Critic Alexandre Boulerice, and your own Member of Parliament.
More Information:
The current re-opening of the economy from the pandemic lockdown is being accompanied by a raft of economic stimulus and recovery packages around the world, totalling at least $9 trillion (USD) so far – with a pandemic that potentially could stretch over several years, according to some projections.
Sustainability analysts all point out that it’s critical these funds do not provide a life jacket to keep destructive and dying industries afloat, like coal, tar sands, and oil and gas. Rather, the opportunity provided by the brief reductions in global emissions, the change in consumer behaviour, and the shift in global markets during the lockdown presents the most critical opportunity to redirect our societies’ dependencies away from these destructive dead ends.
The European Union has approved a green economic recovery package of $850 billion (USD) to invest in energy efficiency, clean energy, mass transit, electric vehicles, sustainable agriculture, and a just transition for fossil fuel industry workers into new green jobs. In Canada there is a major push by sustainability champions that any forthcoming economic stimulus packages must include a similar green recovery – so far it is unknown how far down the green path the Trudeau government will go. However, the new Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland recently stated the government’s intentions to make the economic recovery a “Green Recovery” - how they interpret this depends in large part on the various lobbying forces pushing them, including public opinion.
It has been stated that the next 6 months will be THE crucial moment in the battle for our planet’s future. This is due to the consequences of massive economic recovery spending that could “lock us in” to an economic and hence environmental trajectory for years to come. Given the late hour to avert catastrophic change now, our primary economic path combined with our core environmental policies in this short window of literally months could greatly determine the likelihood of our ability to meet our international target to keep average global temperatures from a 2 degree Celsius rise - and thus divert our trajectory from the global collapse of most ecosystems and civilization.
Most Green Recovery Plans and proposals emphasize the importance of clean energy, mass transit, energy efficiency, electric vehicles, sustainable agriculture, and assistance for fossil fuel industry workers to transition into clean industries - indeed, these are all necessary components of a Green Recovery Plan.
However, most Green Recovery Plans have lacked any major emphasis on a critical part of the solution– the large-scale protection of nature.
A new study shows that placing 30% of Earth in protected areas would lead to an increased economic output of between $64 bn and $454 bn (USD) annually, depending on which areas were subject to conservation efforts, and that the economic benefits versus the investment ratio to establish protected areas would be 5 to 1.
“Across all measures, the experts find that the benefits are greater when more nature is protected as opposed to maintaining the status quo,” stated their press release.
Regarding BC’s famed but endangered old-growth forests, a 2008 study at Simon Fraser University showed that protecting old-growth forests in southwestern British Columbia has greater potential economic value than commercial logging.
Not only would protecting nature support a major economic recovery, but it is also vital for our “health” recovery. Numerous studies have shown that nature supports human mental and physical health in numerous ways. For example:
- Trees and many plants emit phytoncides - volatile organic compounds with anti-microbial effects - that we breathe, boosting our immune system (NK lymphocytes).
- Trees filter out the pollution of volatile organic compounds, such as nitrogen dioxide and low level ozone, which cause respiratory tract illnesses like asthma and that depress our immune systems.
- Being in forests and nature greatly support our mental and physical health in general by reducing the stress hormone cortisol, lowering the heart rate and blood pressure, lowering cholesterol levels, reducing the risk of coronary heart disease, and diminishing ADHD.
- Recreation and physical exercise in nature supports our health, naturally.
- Nature is home to the greatest diversity of micro-organisms that populate our “microbiome” - the vast community of beneficial micro-organisms that boost and regulate our immune systems and health. Microbiome deficiencies are being linked increasingly to asthma, various allergies, compromised immune systems, autoimmune disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, potentially autism, and numerous ailments of modern civilization. We get the greatest diversity of organisms while in nature.
More fundamentally, the protection of our diverse native ecosystems is increasingly being recognized as a fundamental game-changer to help avert both the mass extinction crisis – which threatens the demise of at least a million species over the ensuing decades – AND also the climate crisis, that threatens both ecosystem and civilizational breakdown potentially within a few short decades and, according to an increasing number of projections.
Ultimately, the importance of protecting native ecosystems is far more profound than for its direct economic or health benefits – we are literally facing an issue of survival, due to the prospects of runaway climate change, ecosystem collapse and mass extinction events threatening much of the life on Earth and hence our civilization over the ensuing decades – within our lifetimes. The mass mortality of a large if not majority segment of humanity via famine and wars triggered by drought, floods, resource scarcity and mass migrations, resulting in the breakdown of nation states, will kill a lot more of humanity far, far beyond what COVID will do.
A critical means to avert the climate and extinction crises is the large-scale protection of nature, which is increasingly recognized as a key game-changer both for biodiversity (for obvious reasons) and for the climate by drawing down vast amounts of carbon from the atmosphere in the form of protected, aging forests, unploughed grasslands, undeveloped wetlands, and un-trawled ocean bottoms, vastly diminishing the release of carbon and sequestering far greater amounts of carbon in the vegetation and soils. In conjunction with emissions reductions efforts, the protection of native ecosystems gives us the best chance to reach our international target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.