Good afternoon. Bonjour.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to present to the committee today as you consider the development of a national conservation plan.
I'm John Lounds, president and CEO of Nature Conservancy Canada. Joining me are my colleagues, Michael Bradstreet, our vice-president of conservation,
and Nathalie Zinger, our vice-president for Quebec.
The Nature Conservancy of Canada is a national, not-for-profit charity, and for 50 years we've worked with Canadians to conserve and care for some of Canada's most special natural areas.
As we look ahead to the next 50 years, we applaud your efforts to develop a national conservation plan, a plan to move conservation objectives forward and to better connect all Canadians with nature.
Today we'd like to offer the committee suggestions for its consideration in three key areas. First, we'd suggest that the plan can and should position Canada as leading the world in conservation, owning the podium, so to speak, among all nations in its lands and waters conserved. Second, we would encourage the development of a shared plan that acknowledges and builds on the accomplishments of all Canadians. Third, we would recommend a plan that will mobilize the private sector in support of conservation and lead to conservation solutions that also support responsible economic progress.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said it well when he announced the Government of Canada’s natural areas conservation program partnership with the Nature Conservancy of Canada in 2007. He said, “The great outdoors is at the heart of the Canadian identity.” We couldn’t agree more.
Canada is the world’s second-largest country by area. We have more than 20% of the globe’s wilderness, 20% of its fresh water, 24% of its wetlands, and even more of its intact forests, Arctic, and maritime lands. These habitats support a rich variety of plant and animal life and provide critical ecological services, such as carbon sequestration and water storage and purification.
The ecological services provided by Canadian forests, wetlands, and prairies are globally important. Canada’s boreal peat lands, for example, measurably cool the global climate.
Ecologists generally agree that as much as 30% to 50% of landscapes should be in some conserved status globally to ensure biodiversity conservation and the delivery of ecological services. The planet is a long way from that goal.
Under the Convention on Biological Diversity, Canada and other signatory nations have committed to national goals of 17% in protected areas or, and I emphasize this, other effective area-based conservation measures by 2020. We believe Canada can and should meet this target by 2017, our nation’s 150th birthday, and exceed it by 2020.
Going beyond this current commitment would position Canada first internationally, in the extent of lands conserved, an area more than the combined geographies of France, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Canada can and should own the podium in conservation, and we can do this arguably better than any other country because we are blessed to have our natural estate still largely intact on our land and in our culture.
Secondly, a shared plan begins with sharing our achievements. Canada, using international standards, currently reports protected areas of about one million square kilometres, or 10% of our land mass. That figure underestimates our reality. Remarkably, Canada has never added up the many and varied conservation efforts of Canadians. Think of the individuals, the communities, the conservation groups, agencies, corporations, and first nations and all they have done to conserve nature, natural areas, green space, and wildlife, and consider the following, which are not recognized in that 10% figure: conservation authority lands in southern Ontario; community pastures of prairie Canada; lands owned and stewarded by the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Ducks Unlimited Canada, and the over 150 local and regional land trusts across the country; lands conserved through the Nunatsiavut and Dehcho land claims; northern landscapes that will be conserved through Quebec’s Plan Nord and Ontario’s Far North Act; and the Flathead River Valley and the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia.
A national conservation plan must establish a consistent system to track and count all these conservation achievements on public and private lands. Let’s at least report where we are to inform where we're going.
Finally, a successful national conservation plan will identify ways to engage Canadian communities and the private sector in conservation, thereby connecting more Canadians to nature.
Our experience informs our views. With more than 45,000 financial supporters and hundreds of science and conservation partners, we know that collaboration is at the heart of conservation success.
Using a science-based approach, we work in places with high biodiversity values and have helped conserve more than 2.6 million acres in those places. That’s 100 CFL fields—not counting the end zones—every day for 50 years. Our staff live and work in communities, many in working landscapes, seeking voluntary conservation agreements and creating winning solutions for families, businesses, and nature.
Communities benefit from the use of our lands for hiking, fishing, nature viewing, hunting, and other activities, subject only to the conservation needs of each natural area. We wish to suggest, therefore, that the committee consider including at least three concepts in the plan to mobilize the private sector.
The first of these is public-private partnerships. These partnerships have advanced and continue to advance conservation across the country as they lever private sector investment and donations to deliver on-the-ground conservation results.
Our experience with the natural areas conservation program over the past five years is illustrative. More than 800,000 acres of land have been secured for conservation, with willing vendors and donors in every province of Canada. These lands include the full range of Canadian habitats, including habitat for more than 117 species that are at risk. The program has also matched each federal dollar invested with nearly two dollars of private sector funds and donations, resulting in three dollars of conservation for every federal dollar invested.
The second area we would recommend is that of innovative tools and incentives that can be accessed by Canadians across the working landscape to encourage conservation. Many formally protected areas are surrounded and linked by natural real estate that is less regulated but may be effectively conserved if the tools are offered to private landowners.
Programs such as property tax incentives, ecogifts, covenants, easements, and servitude—Quebec's private nature reserve system—and environmental farm plans already encourage private stewardship. Others should be developed.
Some suggestions might be: allowing severances for conservation purposes; providing tax relief for conservation lands and grants in lieu from senior governments to municipalities; arbitration to resolve conservation agreement disputes, rather than court proceedings; delivery of ecological goods and services by the farm community; and allowing lands held in inventory for development to be eligible for ecogift treatment. In the spirit of a shared plan, while some can be addressed federally, many would need provincial attention to be realized.
Lastly, we wish to suggest that the committee look closely at the potential of what are called biodiversity credits or offsets for development. Sometimes this is called habitat banking.
The economic story of Canada has largely been one of the development of our natural resources. How might we improve our ability to lead the way, both in conserving landscapes and in natural resource development? The concept of biodiversity credits, or habitat banking, may hold the key.
These credits are means by which industry can contribute to environmental protection and conservation over and above, or as part of, the regulatory requirements to avoid, mitigate, and compensate for a project’s environmental impact. Much like municipal conditions of approval requiring a developer to provide for public open space, a similar approach could be used for pipelines, mine sites, or even hydrocarbon footprints.
Currently, impact avoidance and mitigation have focused on the immediate geography of the development itself, independent of the quality or significance of the natural areas involved. While impact avoidance and mitigation may be restricted to the development site, biodiversity credits can be designed to be more flexible. Because they could be used to deliver conservation outcomes at scientifically identified priority natural areas, wherever they may be in Canada, they can maximize the benefits to biodiversity conservation or ecological services at a national level.
In closing, we anticipate a national conservation plan that is a shared vision to guide Canada in the conversation of our lands and waters. We welcome the opportunity to continue this dialogue with you.
At the Nature Conservancy of Canada, we like to say that we create results you can walk on. I'd like to invite committee members to walk with us, to visit some of our on-the-ground projects, and to meet Canadians who have cared for their lands for generations and have drawn us into their dreams.
Please explore our work further. We've provided materials on the natural areas conservation plan, the Nature Conservancy's annual report, and also a map showing where various projects under the plan have been delivered over the past five years.
We encourage the committee not to try to address everything. Let's try to do a few important things very well: establish Canada as an international conservation leader by owning the podium; consistently measure and track all Canadian conservation efforts, public and private; enhance and adopt innovative mechanisms to engage the private sector in conservation, such as public-private partnerships, enhanced conservation tools and incentives, and biodiversity credits.
Canada's 150th birthday is not far away. Let's celebrate in 2017 by advancing a plan to ensure the essence of Canada—our natural heritage—is still here, and better, when Canada turns 300.
Merci.