Environment Committee on May 12th, 2016

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Dr. Woodley, you started to touch a bit on the idea of the other “effective area-based conservation measures” that we hear about from the IUCN or in Aichi target 11. I'm just wondering how you see the federal pieces fitting in with....

Actually, maybe I'll rephrase that. What are your thoughts on what the other effective area-based conservation measures would look like, and what role can they play in our overall conservation strategy in Canada?

[Dr. Stephen Woodley]

That was a clause that was added to target 11 at I think three o'clock in the morning, and the purpose was especially to ensure that indigenous and community conserved areas—remember, this is a global approach—could also be counted, even though governments didn't want to count them or they didn't want to be counted by government. You have to take that global thing into consideration.

I'm actually part of the task force that is developing guidance for the Convention on Biological Diversity, so it's a bit premature to say. I think—

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Could you please wrap it up?

[Dr. Stephen Woodley]

I think it's important that we do consider these other areas, but they won't be a major part of the solution.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you. I'm sorry to have to cut you off.

Mr. Stetski is next.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

I was the manager of the East Kootenay conservation program in my riding of Kootenay, which was looking at conservation on private land, and yes, absolutely, well-managed ranches are important contributors to conservation. I wanted to say that right up front.

My first question will be for Dr. Woodley. We've heard from a number of stakeholders that the federal government has a significant role to play when it comes to conservation leadership and fostering collaboration among key partners. In your view, what measures can government put in place to ensure that stakeholders are all on the same page and working together to reach these conservation targets? Are there models from other countries around the world that we could look to for guidance?

[Dr. Stephen Woodley]

In my view, I think the role is a convening one, because there are so many players, many of which we've heard from today, that have to be part of this.

An example from South Africa is important. They did a national systematic conservation planning exercise. They brought together all parties—miners, loggers, everybody. Everyone put their values on the table, and they used sophisticated planning tools in order to come up with the best solutions for society in general.

The key thing is that fundamentally we need a life-support system. We're talking about prioritizing a life-support system and then working within those priorities. We need that for climate change adaptation and we need it so we have healthy economies and healthy agricultural systems.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

One of the things I've been playing with is that in Canada we have a health accord that provides funding across the country and brings together all provinces and territories around common objectives. I wonder whether something like a conservation accord might work, whereby the federal government would provide funding to provinces and territories, because sometimes there's nothing that brings groups together like money.

[Dr. Stephen Woodley]

I think it's fascinating that you bring that up. I tried to bring that up in my discussion at the end on landscape conservation initiatives that are being developed in the United States. They put federal funding on the table and allowed groups to self-organize around ecological units. It put everybody on an equal footing. It's been extremely successful.

In fact, many of those landscape conservation co-operatives, or LCCs, come over into Canada. I think it's a model that we should take a hard look at as a solution to bringing all interests to the table to do this kind of systematic conservation planning.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

I have a question for the World Wildlife Fund.

As you know, the government has committed to restoring ecological integrity as a priority in our national parks system, which includes national marine conservation areas. What is your assessment of where things are at currently in terms of ecological integrity in marine protected areas? What are some of the threats, and how do we mitigate them moving forward? This is specific to marine conservation.

[Sigrid Kuehnemund]

In terms of ecological integrity, referring to a national marine conservation areas example, one of the suggestions that we have would be to speed up the designation process for NMCAs. On average, it takes about 20 years to designate an NMCA. For ecological integrity, we have a strong view that you would need to restrict extractive uses. NMCAs are great at restricting oil and gas activities, but there is no standard for restricting commercial fishing activities within NMCAs.

As well, with marine protected areas under the Oceans Act, WWF-Canada calls for minimum standards that would restrict extractive uses. We feel that restriction will go hand in hand with ecological integrity.

In terms of threats to marine protected areas, there are certainly human impacts related to commercial fishing activities and oil and gas activities. We also have a view that there are certain activities that can be conducted sustainably within marine protected areas, and we support MPAs that provide community benefits in that respect.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have one minute.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I don't know if I can get the answer in, but I have another question for WWF. A growing number of scientists and stakeholders suggest that in order to provide real protection for biodiversity and to achieve sustainable balance, we need to protect half of our land and water.

What should the greater conservation vision look like?

[Sigrid Kuehnemund]

I think our conservation vision is to have a steady focus on achieving our conservation objectives, such as our Aichi target 11 to protect 10% of our coastal and marine areas by 2020, but that's just part of the process. We must also have a longer-term vision for a much broader level of protection. The science is there, and it is telling us that at least 30% of marine areas need to be protected to ensure the conservation of biodiversity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much for that.

We'll turn it over to Mr. Fisher.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses for being here. This is great. As Mr. Amos said, there is a very wide range of perspectives, and I appreciate you all.

This is a question I have asked in the past of previous witnesses, and I would like to ask it again. As we race to hit our targets—kind of the quality-over-quantity debate—what suggestions do you have as to how we can ensure that we're protecting the best, most worthy land? I guess I'll go to Sigrid and Kimberley first, and then maybe Dr. Woodley would like to chip in afterwards.

[Sigrid Kuehnemund]

Well, Canada has done a lot of work in identifying ecologically and biologically significant areas, and those areas, called EBSAs, are really the foundation of any marine protected area planning process. In terms of conservation value, I think that's certainly the first step.

I'm sorry. I've lost of my train of thought, in terms of your question.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Quality over quantity.

[Sigrid Kuehnemund]

Quality over quantity, yes.

It appears that just in terms of designating very large-scale MPAs, it's certainly one option to reach the Aichi target, but we really have to consider that the MPAs have to be well connected, they have to be representative, and they have to occur within our ocean areas from coast to coast to coast.

The federal government does have a system for developing networks of marine protected areas, and we need to ensure that this process is respected as we start getting MPAs on stream to contribute toward our conservation targets.

We should really focus on planning a network to ensure well-connected systems and representative areas that are adequate and viable in contributing to biodiversity.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Does Dr. Woodley want to offer any suggestions?

[Dr. Stephen Woodley]

Yes. In Canada, we're very fortunate to have a lot of good data on our biodiversity. We have conservation data centres in every province and two of the territories. IUCN has just completed a new guidance on key biodiversity areas, in fact, and we already have a number of them identified in Canada. If we enter into systematic conservation planning, that's exactly the kind of input that goes into this kind of exercise. We're in excellent shape to use that kind of information as long as we organize to do it.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Okay. I have a really quick snapper for Dr. Woodley. You spoke to one of the other members here about the balance of uses. Do you have examples of conservation efforts being successful alongside community or industry use? I was interested in your comment that they could coexist.

[Dr. Stephen Woodley]

Yes. I am sitting right now in the Czech Republic in a category 5 protected area where traditional agriculture is part of the zoning of the park I am in. It has done really well. Nature is always the first priority, but there are always solutions found to incorporate human use of this landscape. It gets six million visitors a year, and the biodiversity values of this place are in fact increasing. There are lots of solutions.

People are part of nature, and we live because of nature. It supports us. When there are 7.3 billion of us on the planet, we have to find those kinds of solutions. We are not going to do it with the business-as-usual approach that we have today. We have to change the way we do business if we want a happy future.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much. Madam Chair, if there are—

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

There are two minutes left.