Input for BC’s Proposed Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework
By the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance (EEA) – May 26th, 2023
These comments highlight the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance’s (EEA) key input for BC’s forthcoming Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework (BEHF).
We greatly commend the BC government for moving forward with this initiative, which potentially could be the framework for a paradigm shift - which the Old-Growth Strategic Review recommendations called for - that puts ecosystem health first in all land-use and forestry decisions. If done well, the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework could be a globally recognized leading policy framework for protecting biodiversity, old-growth forests and endangered ecosystems - or it can fall flat if the myopic and pervasive forces of the status quo continue to undermine progress and squander the opportunity for all.
The development of the BEHF initiative also aligns with Canada’s commitment to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s Montreal-Kunming Global Biodiversity Framework signed at COP15 in 2022 to protect 30% of the terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems by 2030, with the federal government’s forthcoming 2030 Biodiversity Strategy (which they are currently seeking input for) on developing a national protected areas accountability act that would make the 2030 targets legally-binding (and create a legal basis for the provinces to have to come on board), and with the Biden administration’s current move in the US to create a pathway to potentially end the logging of old-growth and mature forests on their federal public lands.
The Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework also aligns with Premier Eby’s recent move to embrace the 30% by 2030 target, to undertake a conservation financing mechanism to fund First Nations Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) plans, and to target IPCA protection for the most biodiverse areas, as expressed in his mandate letter in December of 2022 to Minister of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship Nathan Cullen.
It is thus vital that this framework is effectively designed to truly put ecosystem integrity first, across the diversity of ecosystems in BC, rather than being used as a green façade that skillfully avoids confronting the core problems with the current protected areas, land-use, and forestry management regimes that are full of deficiencies and conservation loopholes – or worse yet, used to exacerbates these problematic areas.
We see the great potential and forward thinking in the general vision and some of the objectives – and also significant shortcomings and calculated acts of sophistry from old-growth timber interests, including some within government, to preserve, shield and extend the life expectancy of the current unsustainable paradigm of old-growth liquidation.
Here we will outline 3 areas of critical importance regarding the BC Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework: Concerns about the process, the critical policy and legislative components that we are asking for, and things to avoid/ concerns we have about where the BEHF is going.
The Process
We commend the BC government for holding multi-sectoral stakeholder input and First Nations forums to develop the BHEF. The process presents a first major opening for a potential paradigm shift that places ecosystem-integrity first, as recommended by the Old-Growth Strategic Review panel.
However, we have several concerns about key flaws in the process.
First, our core, high level input at the first Multi-Sectoral Forum from February 6 to 7, 2023 was not reflected at all in the April 12 “what we heard” document titled “Key themes from Engagement on Prioritizing Ecosystem Health and Biodiversity”. The document somehow missed our central, most important points that were repeated and emphasized by the participants from many of the largest conservation organizations in BC, including the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance, about:
The central importance of linking the declaration/framework to the expansion of protected areas
The need for protected areas targets for all ecosystems (ie. ecosystem-based targets) that include forest productivity distinctions.
That a provincial Chief Ecologist, science teams and regional Traditional Ecological Knowledge committees must set these ecosystem-based targets, not politicians or non-ecologist bureaucrats or foresters.
The importance of protected areas standards and permanency being upheld.
That conservation financing for First Nations communities to fund the sustainable economic development alternatives to old-growth logging is an indispensable driver to get new protected areas in the high value timber areas (not just “capacity, stewardship, data collection, monitoring, and enforcement” as listed in the “what we heard” document that somehow skillfully evaded the core economic development emphasis).
These high level points constitute much of the core of what we’d like to see in a BEHF (elaborated on below), and would close much of the loopholes and gaps in BC’s old-growth, forestry and land use policies that aim to minimize protected areas, direct protected areas into areas of low timber value while evading high productivity forest lands, and that rely on an absence of funding support for economic alternatives for First Nations dependent on old-growth timber revenues in order to constrain protected areas expansion – and yet these critical points we were all making were somehow absent from the April 12 document. We want to emphasize that this has been a serious flaw in the process thusfar, and that our core asks repeated below make it into the key considerations in the development of the BC BEHF.
Not only is stakeholder input important, but public input is even more important - yet no public input has been solicited. About 80% of public opinion in BC according to several polls is in favour of protecting old-growth and ensuring a sustainable second-growth forest industry. Without space for general public input, which requires public information, advertising, and an invitation to participate including via written submissions (which only happened for stakeholders when the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance requested the possibility of such earlier this month on May 3rd), the overall feedback has thus been significantly skewed towards logging industry associated actors (companies, unions, mayors, and forestry managers for communities).
Lastly, the current BC government has taken so long to get conservation financing implemented (still not in place) for First Nations sustainable economic development linked to new protected areas - after being asked repeatedly since 2017 by our collaboration of conservation organizations to do so - that all engagement processes and feedback on provincial old-growth policy gathered thusfar (including the old-growth deferral process, Forest Landscape Planning tables, and for the BEHF here) from First Nations has taken place without any major funding alternatives to their old-growth timber dependency, in particular for the business revenue-stream for First Nations communities (and even for their capacity and stewardship funding needs related to IPCA’s – that funding has been available from the federal government, which has largely been blocked by the province pending a BC Nature Agreement that has been negotiated over 2.5 years and counting still...). This has meant that these old-growth policy development processes have been held without any viable certainty of funding for First Nations to defer and protect old-growth forests without detrimental consequences to their economic well-being – that is, many or most First Nations have not had a reasonable “free choice” to make when it comes to deferring and protecting old-growth forests in the productive old-growth ecosystems where the highest timber values are, and the decisions made thusfar by many communities will necessarily reflect this. The BC government has been more than aware of this situation playing out the whole time, which is no accident.
Key Components Needed of an effective BEHF
The following are the core of what we recommend as critical provisions to ensure that the new framework is effective in putting biodiversity and ecosystems first in all land and resource decisions. These necessary components include:
It must guide and drive forward a new provincial BC Protected Areas Strategy (PAS) that identifies legislated protected areas and stringent forest reserves as foundational to ecological health and as the necessary first steps before implementing more sustainable forms of resource extraction on the rest of the land base (ie. before you decide what to take, you have to figure out what to leave first – a basic tenet of prudence, humility in “resource management”, and that is the first order of any true paradigm shift towards ecosystem integrity – designing a representative and viable protected areas system). With its 30% by 2030 commitment, it goes without saying that the province needs to ensure that the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework is explicitly developed to assist the implementation of BC's 30% by 2030 goal. More sustainable forestry is also needed but is the second-tier after a network of legislated protected areas and unmovable and unloggable forest reserves are established via land-use planning initiatives.
Numerous ecosystems in BC are at a high risk of biodiversity loss, including productive old-growth forests which have been reduced to a fraction of their former extent. The only way to safeguard our most threatened ecosystems is to ensure they are fully protected from industrial resource extraction through legislated protected areas and forest reserves created by working with local First Nations.
The province should officially commit to develop a modernized and fully-resourced Protected Areas Strategy (PAS) as the NDP government did in the 1990’s, as a key initiative within the Ministry of WLRS under the framework of an effective Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework (BEHF) to systematically guide protected areas expansion based on the latest science in conjunction with First Nations land use planning initiatives.
Ecosystem-based protection targets, that is, protected areas targets for each of the diverse ecosystems across BC down to the site series level or at least BEC variant, that also include crucial distinctions in forest productivity (ie. low to high productivity) and seral stages (ie. young to old-growth) to ensure that the most contested, threatened, and biodiverse ecosystems also receive the protection they need. Targets must ensure the long-term viability of those ecosystems to sustain their full complement of native species, seral stages and ecological processes, ie. of sufficient scale to ensure a low risk to their long-term ecological integrity.
Typically, under pressure from industry, protection has favoured low-productivity systems such as high elevation and bog environments with low to no timber values (ie. small trees or no trees), while disproportionately excluding valley bottoms and other high biodiversity habitats with much greater timber value. Without a focus on representing all ecosystems, especially the most imperilled and biodiverse ones, critical ecosystems such as productive, large-tree, old-growth forests - today a small fraction of what once existed - will continue to be minimized from protection.
These ecosystem-based targets should be focused on ensuring 1. ecological representation and 2. the long-term viability of each ecosystem. It would based on the work of provincial science teams comprised of landscape ecologists and conservation biologists and then co-developed on a regional level with Traditional Ecological Knowledge committees from local First Nations communities focused on areas of cultural importance that would add on to (not subtract from) the protected areas targets of the ecological science teams (see next point).
The appointment of a provincial “Chief Ecologist” and a science team to provide a framework of protection that develops the protected areas targets for each ecosystem based on ensuring comprehensive ecological representation and their long-term viability at “low risk” thresholds, similar to the process in the Great Bear Rainforest agreement. This process will increase the priority of protecting the most at-risk ecosystems compared to current conservation policy, which overwhelmingly tends to skirt around their protection due to their often high timber and resource values.
In BC there is the office of the Chief Forester who determines the rates of logging, with an emphasis on timber extraction. We also need the office of a Chief Ecologist to manage science committees to counterbalance that extractive agenda at the highest levels of land use policy, including for setting science-based protected areas targets along with Traditional Ecological Knowledge holders among local First Nations.
A science team of ecologists should be convened to develop the methodology and scientific framework for ensuring the full ecological representation and viability of the protected areas system targets, while ecosystem-specific committees constituted by the relevant ecologists should set targets for these ecosystems based on ecological criteria.
Regionally, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) committees from knowledge holders spanning all local First Nations in each ecosystem would then co-develop targets that would expand or add to the science targets to ensure the protection and restoration of Indigenous cultural and subsistence uses of each ecosystem in their territories.Note that it is scientists (ecologists) and TEK holders - not politicians, bureaucrats, industry, or NGO’s – must form these committees to set ecosystem-based targets, and the composition of ecosystem-specific teams can be comprised of individuals based on their scientific expertise for the specific ecosystems (eg. not all forest ecologists are familiar with grasslands or vice versa). But there must be a baseline of consistent standards and similar criteria used to determine targets across ecosystems.
As a vital pre-cursor and key part of this science-based approach, the work of the independent Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) convened by the provincial government in 2021 to determine the most at-risk forest types must be upheld where it has identified old-growth ecosystems that are a priority for logging deferral areas, and eventually, potential protection. We fully oppose any move to substitute their most at-risk categories with just any old-growth forests in the targeted deferral process, which undermines the whole point of science and ecosystem-based policy making.
In addition, where the data analysis has misidentified old-growth stands on the ground as falling within the most at-risk category, the BC government Ministry of Forests has been more than willing to subtract those lands from the recommended priority lands for deferral – while thusfar failing to allow for the addition of misclassified stands identified by scientists and researchers that should be included in the most at-risk category. This is simply an anti-science and anti-environmental position that must be immediately remedied by the province. First Nations will ultimately decide if they want those lands deferred or not - but the simple identification and inclusion of lands into the most at-risk category is simply a basic exercise to ensure that policy is based on facts and must not be obstructed.
The enshrining of rigorous standards and permanency for new protected areas. The protection of native ecosystems and old-growth forests requires that protected areas are truly protected areas, where the basic standards (no commercial industrial resource extraction like logging, mining, oil and gas – while safeguarding Indigenous subsistence and cultural uses of resources like hunting, fishing, foraging, individual tree cutting for cultural purposes) and permanency (legally-binding protection from the province) of these designations are upheld. In Old-Growth Management Areas (OGMA’s), many Wildlife Habitat Areas (WHA’s), several Visual Quality Objectives (VQO’s) categories, and other designations that fit more within the category of conservation regulations (as opposed to legislated Provincial Conservancies, Provincial Parks and various Protected Area designations), moveable boundaries and/or logging are still possible. The loopholes in these weak conservation regulations must be closed (and until then, they should not “count” for how much land is protected in BC) - this is a key priority, especially for OGMA’s, which should not be subject to boundary changes to let companies access timber. At the same time, it is important not to invent new designations to downgrade the standards and permanency of legally-binding protected areas, as many in the timber industry and in some timber-dependent communities, First Nations and non-First Nations, are proposing – the province must stand firm on this very basic tenet of conservation and protected areas policy and not have a “rubber arm” to facilitate the erosion of protected areas integrity.
Fully resourced protected areas plans, including conservation financing for sustainable economic development in First Nations communities as an alternative to their dependency on old-growth timber revenues and jobs and other unsustainable industries, linked to new protected areas. BC is comprised of the unceded territories of diverse First Nations and the province has a legal responsibility for joint decision-making with First Nations over land use decisions in their territories, including the establishment of protected areas. However, many First Nations communities are dependent on extractive industries including old-growth logging for vital revenues and jobs, a dependency fostered by successive provincial governments, and which constrains the ability of many or most First Nations groups to freely choose conservation options (ie. as in the “free, prior, and informed consent” of First Nations in collaborative decision-making).
The proven game-changer to enable the freedom of First Nations to choose the protection of areas with the most valuable timber is “conservation financing” from governments and conservation groups, where funding for alternative economic opportunities such as eco-tourism, sustainable aquaculture, clean energy, carbon offsets and non-timber forest products enables both an expansion of protected areas and sustainable economic development in First Nations communities. In the Great Bear Rainforest, Haida Gwaii, and currently in Clayoquot Sound, major conservation financing funds from the federal and provincial governments, environmental groups, and carbon offset projects have enabled high levels of forest protection and conservation to move forward.
The BC government has committed to a conservation financing fund, but it is unclear whether it will be economically-focused towards creating Indigenous businesses and jobs that supplant the old-growth timber revenues and jobs in First Nations communities - or if it instead will focus simply on capacity, stewardship, data, monitoring and enforcement needs, while avoiding the largest central need for economic development funding in Indigenous communities to enable the protection of high-productivity forests and the most endangered ecosystems to occur on a sufficient scale (if so, such an evasion by the province will be a means to again shield the status quo of old-growth liquidation and to prevent a paradigm shift on the ground, the opposite of their stated objective).
Ensuring economic transition funding and policies for forestry-dependent communities in general. Over 80% of the medium to high productivity forest lands (places that typically grow the largest trees the fastest) in BC are now second-growth. With appropriate government incentives (egs. PST relief for value-added, second-growth capital investments, providing rebates taken from the fee-in-lieu log exports tax for such investments, and greater funding in general for the transition) and regulations (increasing restrictions on raw log exports), old-growth forests can be protected while forestry employment levels can be enhanced with the development of a sustainable, modernized, value-added, second-growth forest industry with an enhanced wood products engineering sector. Premier Eby is now starting to provide funding for a value-added transition for industry to manufacture smaller diameter (ie. mainly second-growth) logs, and we encourage him to continue this trajectory while the federal government is also starting to support the value-added sector.
Developing a conjoined Conservation Economy Strategy of incentives and regulations to help greatly expand a much more sustainable, diversified, resilient, and prosperous economy in communities near major new protected areas and in general across BC. Numerous studies show that protected areas, including old-growth protection, ultimately attracts and fosters a more diverse and prosperous economy when factoring in tourism, recreation, real estate values, skilled labour attracted to a higher environmental quality of life (including due to nearby protected areas), carbon offsets, non-timber forest products in high-end niche markets, commercial and recreational fishing (supported by the clean water and habitat that protected areas safeguard), and more. To systematically speed up this economic transition and sustainable development process, a concerted government economic stimulus and support strategy can bolster new and existing businesses as new protected areas are established, which will, in turn, help to pave the path economically, socially, culturally and politically to continue the protected areas expansion to meet the province’s targets.
Ensuring Legally-Binding Accountability and Transparency
a) Legally-binding protection targets – with plans and target dates
Ensuring that both the minimum protected areas target of 30% by 2030 is legally-binding, as well as all ecosystem sub-targets set by science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge committees. In order to practically reach these targets, government must develop viable and publicly advertised protected areas plans (involving the processes like land-use planning, data collection, scientific analysis, legal analyses, Indigenous co-development, resources/ funding/ staffing, stakeholder engagement) sufficiently in advance of target dates, which must include interim targets and that keep going beyond 2030, with adequate resourcing to ensure success (e.g. sufficient private land acquisition funding, Indigenous conservation financing, stakeholder compensation funding, funding for science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge committees, etc.).
b) Ensuring important public progress reports and auditing of results
The government must publicly report on progress regularly, including ensuring independent audits on how well they’ve met their various targets (including sub-targets for each ecosystem) at each juncture. They must then remedy any shortfalls with plans that must be assessed for their viability by an independent expert policy panel, with revisions from the feedback which must be implemented.
The above are some of the critical components of what we believe the BC government should do to ensure an effective and successful BC Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework.
What to Avoid
Here are the things we believe the BC government must avoid in developing a BEHF, many of which are the converse of what the government should do:
Avoid marginalizing the central importance of protected areas in biodiversity and ecosystem health, as “just one possible aspect” of “what could be done”, working to make the process primarily about better logging and industrial resource extraction everywhere. This flies in the face of a “paradigm shift” and against the prudence and scientific uncertainty that wise and sustainable resource management policy seeks to address.
Avoid failing to mandate ecosystem-based targets - protected areas targets for all ecosystems (after all, an “Ecosystem Framework” should focus sufficiently to make distinctions on the different ecosystems in BC) - especially failing to make forest productivity distinctions. This will allow the province to continue to publicly claim a vast amount of hectares under protection (primarily located in the alpine, subalpine, and far northern landscapes with low to no timber values), while using up the protected areas budget to evade protection of the biologically richest, most contested forests at lower elevations and in the south with the highest timber values, ie. it will be a continuation of logging the big trees while saving the small trees and the alpine – again, standard procedure and the opposite of a paradigm shift.
This also includes current efforts to minimize the centrality of the TAP science panel’s identified most at-risk old-growth stands as constituting the 2.6 million hectares as priority deferral areas (and instead including “any old-growth” including low productivity stands of small trees), and failing thusfar to allow the addition of misclassified stands congruent with the TAP’s most at-risk categories for deferral (only substracting misclassified stands are allowed by the province) by scientists and researchers.
Avoid undermining the integrity of new protected areas by becoming “flexitarian” on protected areas standards and permanency (ie. allowing logging or moveable boundaries or requiring no provincial legal designation), that is, emphasizing weaker “conservation areas” instead where logging can continue (similar to the Special Management Zones – SMZ’s from the 1990’s land use plans or Wildlife Habitat Area buffer zones where major old-growth clearcuts continue) – and then engaging in creative accounting to include these weak designations as “protected” or “conserved” areas.
Avoid making conservation financing for First Nations communities primarily about capacity, stewardship, data, monitoring and enforcement – and not about the economy, that is, failing to significantly finance Indigenous businesses and jobs that can supplant their economic dependency on old-growth logging revenues and jobs. Again, this would be a way to ensure that the chips fall on the side of the status quo of continued logging of the high-value old-growth timber and to minimize the paradigm shift.
Avoid increasing the economic dependency of communities, including First Nations communities, on old-growth logging via increased tenures, joint ventures, and logging rights buy-backs (potentially using conservation financing funding to do so) without major attached protection requirements for the old-growth and endangered ecosystems. The economic dependency of communities, First Nations and non-First Nations communities, on old-growth logging is the key driver behind maintaining the non-ecological status quo. It is the key obstacle against a paradigm shift and the key cover that the BC government can hide behind - a dependency ultimately facilitated and fostered by the provincial government, which must end and certainly not be expanded.
Avoid marginalizing the role of science and provincial standards in playing foundational roles in protected areas targets, and instead finding cover behind supporting a regionalization of decision-making by communities with economic dependencies on old-growth logging. If the goal is a transformation of the status quo, a provincial Chief Ecologist and science teams that develop ecosystem-based protected areas targets that factor in representation and long-term viability of real protected areas is completely consistent with regional Traditional Ecological Knowledge committees co-developing regional targets, and with local First Nations land use planning initiatives which ultimately decide on protection on the ground. To construe that a provincial science approach for ecosystem protection is mutually-exclusive to the regional development of an ecosystem framework is again simply a path to shield and protect the status quo of continued old-growth logging - and fully inconsistent with the province’s approach to setting AAC timber harvest levels in each local tenure from the provincial office of the Chief Forester.
Avoid minimizing economic transition policies towards a sustainable, value-added second-growth forest industry and to develop a more diversified, sustainable economy linked to new protected areas expansion. Failing to bring on board resource workers, the business community, and First Nations dependent on old-growth logging in the wake of a proposal to potentially protect the high-value old-growth stands, by failing to adequately support alternatives in value-added second-growth forestry and in diversifying rural economies, is a convenient way for the province to find cover behind a backlash against environmental progress (“communities have spoken”), and is a tried, true and tested approach that politicians and longer-running bureaucrats in the Ministry of Forests know well.
Avoid failing in the “information stream” to communicate to First Nations regarding deferrals and potential protected areas plans that:
a). There is major conservation financing funding from the province and federal government coming that can help develop Indigenous-owned businesses and stewardship jobs in lieu of old-growth logging revenues and jobs, and
b). Provincial Conservancy and several Protected Area (PA) designations explicitly recognize the value of the lands for Indigenous culture, safeguard Indigenous subsistence and cultural harvesting of resources (hunting, foraging, individual tree cutting for cultural purposes), and entail First Nations co-management. We have spoken with many Indigenous leaders and councils while working ourselves to support their protected areas initiatives, and the vast majority have been unaware of these two critical components that enable many of these communities to support new protected areas in the areas of productive old-growth forests – because the province has fully failed to communicate these key items to them. This has led many First Nations to believe that any protected areas in productive old-growth forests will simply cause a loss in net revenues and jobs in their communities, and that all protected areas constrain their ability to hunt, gather, cut old-growth cedar for canoes and totem poles, and to manage their lands. Failing to communicate these key points by the province when engaging First Nations communities is a gross failure when it comes to “informed consent” in efforts towards joint decision-making with First Nations, and again serves the status quo.
Avoid failing to proactively advocate for old-growth protection and an ecosystem-based protected areas expansion, and instead “leaving it up to communities” (most of which are timber dependent at this time) in the absence of conservation financing alternatives and in the absence of the province sharing critical information about the existing and forthcoming funding and about the protected areas designations congruent with First Nations land, subsistence and management rights. Where will the chips land when this is the approach? Anything but a paradigm shift. Again, this is no accident.
In summary, we are excited by and are grateful for the province and Premier Eby opening the door to what potentially could be a historic game-changer to ensure the large-scale protection of the most endangered ecosystems across BC, act as a vital path towards major reconciliation for First Nations (keeping ecosystems intact that are the basis of culture, expanding Indigenous land management, and ensuring major sustainable economic development in communities), and facilitate a transformation of BC’s economy towards a far more sustainable and prosperous path. We hope that the significance of this opportunity is fully seized, and we encourage the provincial government andd all actors to make this happen.
Sincerely,
Ken Wu and Celina Starnes
Endangered Ecosystems Alliance