Input for Canada's National 2030 Biodiversity Strategy
By the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance (EEA) – July 13th, 2023
What are the key features of a successful 2030 Biodiversity Strategy?
Protected areas must constitute the foundation to reach the 25% by 2025 and 30% by 2030 minimum targets – not less stringent “conserved areas” that often lack the protection standards (eg. allowing commercial logging and other industrial activities) and permanency (many are readily removable) of protected areas.
Ecosystem-based targets must be set by ecological science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge committees to protect the full diversity of ecosystems on a sufficient scale to ensure the long-term ecological viability of each ecosystem.
Legally-binding UN biodiversity targets and ecosystem-based targets.
Government accountability and transparency via action plans that align with advice of independent expert councils, with mandatory deadlines for implementation, and public enforcement mechanisms in the event of unreasonable delays or contraventions.
Cooperation between federal and provincial governments.
Adequate funding to achieve targets, including for Indigenous-led protected areas, private land acquisitions, and licensee compensation.
What are the most signficant challenges and opportunities? What successful initiatives could we build upon?
Greatest challenges will be:
A push by industry actors and some in government against ecosystem-based targets, so that areas less coveted by industry (eg. alpine and Arctic, subarctic and muskeg regions) will continue to be prioritized for protection rather than areas with the greatest concentrations of species and ecosystems at risk (generally in the south). There is also a push to include more tenuous “conserved areas” that permit logging, mining, and/or oil and gas extraction to count towards meeting targets.
Insufficient funding, in particular conservation financing needed for First Nations’ sustainable economic development linked to establishing new protected areas.
Ensuring provincial cooperation in meeting targets. The federal government and civil society must ensure that provincial governments fully support meeting targets, with sufficient resources allocated.
Greatest opportunities:
Opportunities for First Nations to lead in protected areas, (e.g. for Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs)).
The Great Bear Rainforest Agreement in BC provides a largely positive precedent for science-based ecosystem protection targets with conservation financing for First Nations protected areas
Are there targets where Canada is already making good progress, and others where Canada should focus more attention?
Protected areas expansion in recent years in large parts of Canada’s North (eg. tundra, taiga and northern boreal in the NWT, Nunavik, Quebec, Alberta). Soon large areas in northern Manitoba and in northern and alpine/subalpine landscapes of BC will be protected.
Protection now should focus most heavily on ecosystems:
Most impacted by industry, largely in Canada’s south.
Least represented in the protected areas system.
In general, this includes ecosystems throughout the Great Lakes-St Lawrence (particularly the Carolinian zone and Mixedwood Plains), Prairie grasslands and aspen parkland, Montane ecosystems in Alberta, southern Boreal, southern Acadian ecosystems, southern lower elevation ecosystems across BC in the Coastal Douglas-fir, Interior Douglas-Fir, Coastal Western Hemlock, Ponderosa Pine, Interior Cedar Hemlock, Bunchgrass, Montane Spruce, and Sub-Boreal Spruce Pine zones, and moderate to high productivity old-growth in BC. Per hectare are they are most at risk from logging, agriculture, and/or urban development.
What measures should be prioritized soon to ensure progress to ensure we meet the 2030 targets and are on track to reach longer-term 2050 goals?
Passing a domestic law which enshrines Canada’s biodiversity targets and commitments.
Assembling independent expert councils, such as a national science team of ecologists, to develop ecosystem-based protection targets; and regionally/locally, Traditional Ecological Knowledge committees. Putting these together takes time, including for familiarization of the process in Indigenous communities.
Allocating sufficient funding for Indigenous communities, who are often dependent on industrial resource industries, for developing alternative economies which are sustainable and linked to new protected areas (not only in the four regions where this has been committed: James Bay Lowlands, Great Bear Sea, NWT, and Nunavut).
Developing an effective system of incentives and regulations to facilitate provincial cooperation
No target is an island: What overarching tools and solutions are critical to make progress across multiple targets?
Relying on the passage of a new biodiversity accountability act that enshrines Canada’s biodiversity targets and commitments and ensures legally binding protection and biodiversity targets, in keeping with independent expert committees’ recommendations.
Ensuring adequate provincial cooperation and action in achieving biodiversity and protection targets.
Greater and adequate funding to support Indigenous-led protected areas, First Nations conservation financing, private land acquisitions, and compensation for resource holders.
Ensuring the fulfilment of targets using the best available data sets on ecosystems/plant communities and biodiversity. The new national Biogeoclimatic Zone classification scheme is the best national, modernized ecosystem classification scheme available, and should be the basis of developing the larger ecosystem-based targets, and can be augmented by the older Eco-Regional classification. “Finer filter” plant community-based targets should also be developed.
What knowledge holders and enabling mechanisms (networks, policies) are critical to inform implementation decision-making at all levels?
Academic community with expertise in ecology, conservation biology, biogeography and landscape ecology; and social sciences related to policy, politics, sociology and anthropology, are vital for developing science-based targets, policies and plans.
Ensuring that First Nations knowledge holders are identified, contacted, and provided leadership opportunities, while being financially supported in developing regional/local targets.
Convene a “Nature-Based and Sustainable Businesses” group to amplify communications, provide resources to support First Nations protected areas, private land acquisition, and develop jobs in communities affected by new protected areas.
Outdoor recreation and rural communities that benefit from protected areas (including those which support fishing, hunting and guide outfitting) should also be engaged to speak up for protected areas.
Greater engagement of conservation ENGOs across Canada is key in mobilizing biodiversity protection.
Ensuring provincial datasets on biodiversity are publicly accessible.
In drafting the 2030 Biodiversity Strategy, what individuals’, communities’, or organizations’ perspectives, knowledge and skills should be meaningfully amplified to make progress on reducing threats to biodiversity?
Building on the minimum protections set out in the Convention on Biological Diversity, that recognizes the dependency of Indigenous peoples and local communities on biological diversity and their unique role in conserving biodiversity, the knowledge of Indigenous communities must be respected, preserved and maintained. This means enabling (1) the full and effective participation of Indigenous peoples, local communities and Indigenous women in all stages of the identification and implementation of the elements of action plans and (2) that traditional knowledge, innovations and practices should be valued, given the same respect and considered as useful and necessary as other forms of knowledge.
The knowledge from the scientific/academic community should be foundational in developing and communicating the need and path towards protected areas expansion.
Nature-based businesses and recreation groups with a stake in protected areas, as well as the voices of conservation groups, are important.
What are the key humans needs and values to be addressed to make biodiversity loss a mainstream concern?
This question would be better framed as “What are the key human needs and values to be addressed that can make protected areas garner mainstream support”? The economic and health benefits are huge.
Numerous studies show that protected areas attract and support a major net benefit for regional economies in tourism, recreation, real estate values, by attracting skilled labour, carbon offsets, non-timber forest products, and via ecosystem services.
Extensive studies also show that being in nature is key for health by counteracting numerous ailments – heart disease, stress, ADHD, chronic inflammation, cancer, etc.
Outdoor recreation and quality of life will resonate in a foundational way for most, including rural Canadians.
In Indigenous communities, supporting messages by protected areas champions that protected areas help to support Indigenous cultures/ identity, subsistence rights, spirituality, co-management authority, jobs and businesses.
What does success look like?
The exceedance of our UN biodiversity targets in advance of the 2030 and 2050 protection goals
The major expansion of an ecological protected areas system, based on ecosystem-based targets across all ecosystems, including a major protected areas expansion in the most endangered ecosystems (largely in southern Canada), and at a minimum, reaching the national targets within each province and territory.
Targets reached through legislated protected areas, rather than tenuous “conservation areas” that permit commercial resource industries and extraction to continue.
An expansion of Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas that ensure First Nations cultural and subsistence use of ecosystems, management and co-management authority, and that support Indigenous jobs and businesses.