Evidence of meeting #164 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was biodiversity.
A video is available from Parliament.
NDP
Wayne Stetski NDP Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Thank you very much to all of you for being here today. Great witnesses.
I was a former regional manager with the ministry of environment for southeastern B.C., responsible for ecosystems, fish and wildlife. Then I was manager of the East Kootenay conservation program involved in purchasing private land for conservation; so inherently, I care about every species.
The challenge we have is that many people look at life through economics rather than conservation. I'm wondering if we're starting to do a better job.
I know, Professor Kerr, you started to talk about the economic importance of species winking out, but why should people care about species winking out, from an economic perspective as well as a personal one?
I'll start with Mr. Chan and Mr. Kerr, and then I'd be interested in hearing from all of you on that.
Prof. Kai Chan
There are several answers to this important point. The first is that species are part of ecosystems and that ecosystems provide a wide array of ecosystem services that are valuable in a number of different respects and that can be valued economically. When you do that kind of evaluation, it is often the case that the benefits of conservation or restoration outweigh the costs that are associated with that.
The problem, of course, is in terms of what is internal, what is internalized, to private decision-making. Many of the benefits associated with conservation or restoration are public benefits, ones that are felt and experienced by the nation as a whole and ones that, in many cases, may only be experienced later in time.
The problems are primarily associated with private decision-making that allows the externalization of costs, where economic activities can expose those costs in the form of environmental degradation that requires other people to pay for the damages, and with short-termism, that is, focusing on only what happens over the next few years without sufficient regard to what happens in the more distant future.
Species are crucial components of ecosystems, and ecosystems provide valuable services. The problems are, effectively, undue privatization and insufficient accounting for public benefits and for the long-term benefits.
Prof. Jeremy Kerr
Thank you.
This is an excellent question and one that I grapple with in many ways, often in the media, but also just with myself. Why do we care about biological diversity?
One of the answers to that question, of course, was touched on extremely ably by Professor Chan: that species do things that matter and that sometimes they do things that matter to us in ways that we fail to measure in economic terms. This is really important, this notion of externalities: that we derive economic benefits from species in a diffuse manner, but that we don't measure those economic benefits all too often. The consequence is that when we inadvertently drive a species extinct without being aware of what we're doing, the cost of that is zero because it's not something that we measure the impact of. That's something that I think we need to be very careful about. There are better ways to do this.
Another element of this, from my point of view, is that if we reduce everything to the question of whether species X, Y, or Z has sufficient economic value in any given instance to prevent development or to alter the way development is conducted, then in many instances—and I suspect even in most instances—what's going to happen is that the decision will be that in the exact location where development is proposed, the specific economic return of biodiversity in that place is relatively small. We can make that decision a million times, and the consequence is that we find ourselves in the midst of a global extinction crisis that we haven't seen in 65 million years. That is literally true.
I have to say that this is a concerning question, but the thing I would say in conclusion—I know that I have to wrap up—is that it's not really about the money. It's about what kind of world we want to live in, and that's a decision that we take away from our children by continuously conceding that in any given instance we are always going to side with a short-term economic perspective.
Senior Conservation Biologist, National Office, Nature Conservancy of Canada
There are several ways of answering the question why do we value species? The first is utilitarian, and economics is catching up in how we can measure the value of the benefits that nature provides to people.
Two years ago, the Nature Conservancy of Canada partnered with TD Bank to identify the natural capital values of forested areas across Canada. There's a lot of variation, but the average value of a hectare of forest was over $25,000 per year, and if it is maintained, it will provide those services forever. Even the TD economist recognized this is a gross underestimation, that there's only so much they could value as economists, and the true value was much higher.
From a utilitarian perspective I think the main reason we don't want to lose species is that we simply don't know what the impacts will be of losing those species directly, or how those impacts can cascade through the ecosystem and affect people.
I think the other reason is the intrinsic values, as Dr. Kerr alluded to. Do we want live in a world where we're consciously choosing to let species go extinct? I cut the past generations a little slack because they didn't have the science, the knowledge maybe, that it was the last place or the last example of a species. We don't have that slack now; we know which species are declining and are unlikely to be passed on to future generations. It's really our decision what we're going to save. In some cases, we need to make those decisions very quickly.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John Aldag
We're out of time.
That takes up the amount of time we had for our first panel. We do have our second panel on standby—the threat of votes is still hanging over our heads.
I'd like to ask the members to stay at the table; we're going to suspend for a minute to swap out the witnesses.
Thank you so much for what you've been able to share today and for being part of this discussion. Unfortunately, because of where we are in the session, we're not going to be able to do a report, but we thought it was important to at least invite you here to have a discussion and allow Canadians to hear from you. Thank you so much for what you've been able to share today.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John Aldag
We'll get our next panel started.
Alison Woodley is here, and we have Harvey Locke. It's always a pleasure to see both of you.
Alison, if you want to go right into your opening statement, I'll give you about seven minutes. We'll use the same card system when one minute is left and it's time to wrap it up.
Alison Woodley Strategic Advisor, National Office, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society
Thank you very much for inviting me to speak with you today.
I'm Alison Woodley, and I'm here on behalf of CPAWS, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, where I'm currently a strategic adviser.
CPAWS is Canada's only nationwide charity dedicated solely to the protection of our public land, fresh water and ocean. Ninety per cent of our country's land and all of our fresh water and ocean estate are in public hands, so this is a big area and a big responsibility. We have 13 regional chapters across the country, a national office here in Ottawa and about 100 staff working on the ground across the country with Crown governments, indigenous governments and local communities, industry and other partners to support protection of more of our land and seascape.
CPAWS has a bold vision: to protect at least half of Canada's public land, fresh water and ocean. We adopted this vision in 2005 in response to the growing scientific evidence that we need this scale of conservation action if we're going to safeguard the health of the natural world that we and all other species with whom we share the earth rely on for our existence and our well-being.
Since 2005, there's been a huge uptick in support for this scale of thinking. Many scientists, organizations and citizens, internationally and in Canada, are now recognizing the need for this scale of conservation action, and the IPBES report is no exception. It highlights that we have a global emergency for nature and for climate, that these two issues interact and that we need to scale up our action.
The global Nature Needs Half movement is gaining momentum around the world. A petition by Avaaz now has 2.2 million signatures. Scientist E. O. Wilson, one of the world's most renowned biologists, published his book Half-Earth a few years ago. National Geographic, which goes into the living rooms of millions of people around the world, is now championing a post-2020 biodiversity goal that includes protecting half the earth. Indigenous leader Herb Norwegian, a former grand chief of the Dehcho First Nations, was an early champion.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John Aldag
I'm sorry to jump in here.
The bells have just started ringing, and once they do, we need unanimous consent to continue. Because we are just down the hall, is there agreement that we go longer? Is there a willingness to do that? If we could go 20 minutes into the bells, that would still give us 10 minutes to get down to the chamber.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John Aldag
We'll keep going and at least get the witness testimony, and then we'll see if there's any time for questions and answers at that point.
My apologies.
Strategic Advisor, National Office, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society
Canadians are ready for big conservation goals and for Canada to lead. Last year I was involved in a study with the University of Northern British Columbia of a Canada-wide survey that was recently published in the peer-reviewed journal, FACETS.
One of the questions we asked was how much of our country's land and ocean should be protected. The most common answer was 50% for both land and sea. The average response ranged from 43% to 51%. Canadians are on board with big conservation targets.
The IPBES assessment is really a call to action. It reinforces that we have this emergency, that climate change and nature are interconnected, and that the emergency is mutually reinforcing. We need to recognize better that conservation action helps to tackle climate change and that climate action can help to reverse biodiversity loss. Setting large-scale land and ocean protection and restoration targets and implementing them in a planned fashion is an important opportunity to bring these discussions together and advance both.
Canada has a big opportunity to lead, and we're urging Canada to champion a global goal of protecting half the earth and setting a milestone target of at least 30% protection by 2030 in the next Convention on Biological Diversity strategic plan, which is currently being discussed both globally and in Canada. We're also urging Canada to adopt these targets at home. It's necessary, and it's achievable. CPAWS released a report a couple of weeks ago showing how this can be achieved in the ocean. I have a pile of copies here for you today, and the French versions are in production. I'd welcome you to come and get a copy from me afterwards.
Last time I was here at committee, we were discussing protected areas and how to meet the 2020 biodiversity targets of 17% and 10% protection by 2020. Three years later, thanks in part to your important and unanimous all-party report and lots of other efforts by many other people, we've seen the biggest ever increase in ocean protected and conserved areas in Canada, which have expanded eightfold in three years, and put in place for the first time minimum protection standards for MPAs. We're on track to meet these targets in the ocean and likely to exceed them by 2020, and planning is now under way as well in some regions for more comprehensive networks of MPAs beyond 2020. There's more work to be done, for sure, but there's been great progress.
On land, where provincial and territorial governments control most of the land base, progress has been slower but still significant. The federal government has brought together governments and indigenous peoples under the umbrella of the pathway to target 1 initiative that was mentioned by other witnesses.
They've invested more than $1.3 billion in terrestrial nature conservation, and many of us in this room had worked very hard to make that happen. Very importantly, this funding is not just funding for the federal government, but it is flowing to partners on the ground, and this is critical. The new nature fund is generating huge interest in protecting much more land across the country, particularly from indigenous governments and communities. There's so much demand for that funding that there's way more demand than the current funding can support, which really shows the depth of interest that exists across this country in protecting more of our land and ocean, as well as the opportunity we have here in Canada to move forward by supporting on-the-ground efforts.
We need to keep the pedal to the metal to achieve our 2020 targets, but as your report from a few years ago noted, these were interim targets. They were always meant to be interim targets. They're not adequate to achieve the goal of biodiversity conservation. Now it's time for Canada to look beyond 2020 and to set ambitious targets based on the science and indigenous knowledge for what's needed to save nature, which is in the order of half the earth.
The IPBES report reinforces a few more things I want to quickly highlight. First of all is the importance of indigenous-led conservation, and this is a huge opportunity here in Canada. Second, it is important to make sure that quality and quantity are reflected in the next suite of targets to meet our goals of reversing the decline of nature and tackling climate change. Third, it makes the compelling case for scaling up the financial support that exists, including by transforming subsidies into incentives, as my colleagues focused on in the last panel, and the clear benefits of doing so.
To conclude quickly, the IPBES report highlights the challenges we face, but also the opportunity we have to act decisively and to make a big difference. Canada has a huge opportunity to lead, and I encourage you to help us grasp this opportunity.
CPAWS is committed to helping in any way we can.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John Aldag
Thank you, Ms. Woodley, for your opening comments.
We're going now to Dr. Justina Ray by video conference.
Thank you, Dr. Ray, for joining us today. I'll turn it over to you, and we'll give you about seven minutes for your opening comments. I'll hold up the yellow card when there's one minute left, and a red card to wrap it up, and then we'll move to our final presenter.
Over to you for your comments, Dr. Ray.
Dr. Justina Ray President and Senior Scientist, Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, As an Individual
Great, thank you so much.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the standing committee, for asking me to appear here.
The perspective I'm speaking to you from is that of a biodiversity scientist, for one. I'm president and senior scientist of the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, and I'm an adjunct professor at two universities, Trent and U of T. I come at this with particular field research experience with boreal forest mammals, but also in the tropics, so I have an international perspective to bring. I'm intensively involved in the science-policy interface at both provincial and federal levels. I recently concluded a nine-year stint as co-chair of the terrestrial mammals subcommittee of COSEWIC, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, the body that assesses species at risk under the Species at Risk Act. I'm very familiar with what it would have taken to put together this report, the kind of process, and I understand the conclusions of the “Summary for Policymakers” that was released last week.
In this very short time, I'm going to talk about what's unique about this particular report and why it deserves particular attention, what findings are most relevant to Canada, and what this says about solutions in Canada.
With respect to the uniqueness of the report, just to underscore the sheer number of studies that went into the conclusions of the report, there were something like 15,000 papers assembled by 150 scientists and subject to intensive peer review. The authority of the UN process is very special. We already have this through the International Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, which is a very similar body. It means that the results and conclusions, and so on, would be written by scientists and endorsed by various governments. It was agreed to by all 130 party governments, so it doesn't represent the opinion of a few, and it has undergone some very rigorous review processes.
Second, the trends that it has shown are extremely relevant globally. They are everywhere. In many wildlife ecosystems in terms of health and functioning, it's very clear that these deteriorating trends have been accelerating and intensifying in the last 50 years in particular. This rate of change is huge relative to the last 10 million years, and it is certainly projected to continue.
The conclusions were not a surprise to most wildlife scientists and ecosystem scientists. We've seen the evidence unfold in studies that are published nearly every day. Many of us have observed first-hand some of these trends playing out in places that we're most familiar with. We've delivered several of the key messages in the report ourselves.
What about this report is most relevant to Canada? Canada is not mentioned anywhere in the summary, nor are any countries, I think. Some regional trends are evident. There is quite a focus on the tropics, but we can't lull ourselves into complacency in this regard because many of the conclusions, if not most of them, are directly relevant to Canada, and I'll name just a few.
The drivers of biodiversity loss and degradation are pretty much the same in Canada as globally. As reported in the summary, land conversion, overfishing, climate change, pollution, invasive alien species, and overharvesting in some places are the top drivers of species and ecosystem degradation here in Canada. Habitat loss is out in front. Certain ecosystems, like wetlands and grasslands, are a shadow of what they once were.
There are some threats that are worse in Canada than in the rest of the world. Two are top of mind. Over-exploitation of fisheries in the northeast Atlantic and northwest Pacific is singled out in the report. Also, there is obviously the threat of climate change, which is playing out in high latitudes.
These are stark threats that are more problematic in Canada than elsewhere in the world. Canada may have fewer species, but the trends for the major species groups are similar, for similar reasons—like large mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles. We have once-common species groups here that have suddenly become at risk of extinction, like little brown bats, barn swallows, common snapping turtles.
Species loss is already having clear ramifications for food security in some places here in Canada. Caribou up in the north are a very clear example.
Our knowledge emphasizes a certain handful of species and species at risk, but that's really just the front end. There are 80,00 species in Canada, most of which we know very little about. There's a similar message here, as for most of the world.
Another thing the report talks about is the phenomenon of homogenization, which is where, through certain threats of habitat loss, through introduction of alien species, things become more clear for winners rather than losers. There are clear winners and clear losers in this game. A lot of places we know are becoming more and more homogenous in terms of the same types of plants and animals showing up, no matter what the underlying ecosystem was previously. We're seeing that more and more.
What does this say about required actions in the Canadian context? I've referred a bit to public complacency on this issue, in terms of many people being lulled that this is a report that's really only relevant for the tropics—and I've told you why it's not. The connection between nature and human well-being was clearly emphasized in this report. That's one of its extremely well-articulated conclusions. It's just not as directly evident for most people. It does not express itself as dramatically as weather events, which are being increasingly understood. One recent study showed that media talks much more about climate change than about biodiversity loss, about eight times more.
Generally, our governments are not really equipped to deal with biodiversity in a holistic sense. I want to highlight two recent reports that confront this situation in a similar fashion to that of IPBES. The first is a fantastic report that your standing committee wrote in 2016, “Federal Sustainability for Future Generations”. It talked about and emphasized the need for a truly integrated policy-making, whole-of-government approach. There was a similar report by the Canadian Council of Academies, which was commissioned by NRCan, “Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts”. It just came out in January and talks about this need for integrated resource management.
Just as I conclude, I'll say three things. First, although we have much to be worried about, the conservation opportunities are still enormous in this country. As the second-largest country in the world, we have globally significant ecologically intact areas and Arctic systems. Not only are these strongholds for important species that have lost ground elsewhere, but also this is where nature is providing major carbon storehouses. We must understand, from experience, that we can't take these for granted. Indigenous-led conservation is going to be very important for the future.
Second, protected areas, as we just heard, are very, very important, but so are the intervening spaces. The situation facing Wood Buffalo National Park, the largest national park in Canada, is a great case in point for that.
Third, much more financial investment will be required, including this attention to subsidies.
Thank you so much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John Aldag
Great. Thank you so much for those opening comments.
Now, Mr. Locke, we'll move to you. We're at 16 minutes, and so I'll set the timer for six minutes. I'll let you know when that time is up.
Harvey Locke Chair, Beyond the Aichi Targets Task Force, International Union for Conservation of Nature World Commission on Protected Areas (IUCN), As an Individual
Thank you.
I asked to have some PowerPoint slides that will help to ground my comments. While they come up, I'll thank everyone on the committee for the time that I was able to spend with you in Banff and for the impact that your report had. I've been around a little while, and I have rarely seen a report like that get the ball rolling in such a great way.
I think great things have happened relative to the stasis Canada was in with relation to nature conservation three years ago. I just hope we can keep it rolling regardless of what happens this fall. The spirit that this committee showed me about moving ahead on this was to me really inspiring when I was with you last time, and I hope we can continue.
I'm going to move quickly into my talk.
This is about land use histories. Here's the big take-away. What humans do to land determines what conservation responses we have and determines the conditions of biodiversity or nature. This first slide shows a map of Canada's land use histories. The bright red or salmon colour in the south shows where we live and produce our food. The green areas are where we've practised forestry and oil and gas and mining. The blue areas are where it's still wild.
Look at that map. That's just what we do as humans. The next map shows the distribution of endangered species in Canada. You will see the one-to-one correlation between what we do and where things are doing well or not well.
A number of speakers have talked about the south. The south is where we've cultivated, where we have our cities, where all of us live and where we get our food. Then you have these in-between areas. You can see that a narrow band is going down the Rockies where the colours are a bit better; that's the Yellowstone-to-Yukon corridor and the Flathead valley that we talked a lot about when we were together in Banff.
Those blue parts shown are the big parks in the Canadian Rockies: Banff and Jasper, and the parks in B.C. like Wells Gray, that are coming down into southern Canada. This is one area where you see that wildness coming down into southern Canada, as well as Quetico park.
We have these three really different conditions in our country, and those three really different conditions need to drive different conservation responses, and they apply all over the world. I'm the lead author on a paper we're about to publish that has been authored by people from all over the world. It's about the three global conditions that exist for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. The same patterns that occur in Canada occur in China, Colombia and Australia. This is the way we need to go forward with our thinking on how we plan for our relationship with nature.
Basically, the world is divided into cities and farms, shared lands and large wild areas. The strategies we need for each are different. Each speaker before me has talked about various dimensions of exactly this breakdown.
For large wild areas, we need to keep the entire systems intact. Canada is blessed with large wild areas. We store a bunch of carbon in those wild areas. Some of the highest carbon storage in the world occurs in the Mackenzie basin and the Hudson Bay lowlands. This is also where we have indigenous people still engaging with nature in traditional ways, with the management regimes that are worth preserving through time.
In the intermediate areas, this is where the ideas of interconnected corridors with large protected areas, such as the Yellowstone-to-Yukon idea, apply well. We need to protect something like 25% to 75% of each ecoregion. Where we have our cities and farms, we need to do restoration, as was discussed. We need to manage how nitrogen is used. We have to keep our pollinators in the landscape. We need to practise good urban planning. We need to give people access to nature.
These three things together—these strategies together—could lead to a lot of the transformative change that the IPBES report calls for, but we need to be doing the right things in the right places across the country simultaneously. One is not more important than the other. The biodiversity in the south is not more important than the caribou in the north, nor are the grizzly bears in the Rockies more important than the frogs around southwestern Ontario where they grow tomatoes.
We need to save the whole thing, and I believe we need to help the world save the whole thing. Our country is up to that, so that's the quick five-minute version of my talk.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John Aldag
Thank you.
We're at just over 10 minutes on the clock right now. It's going to be close to 10 minutes after 5 p.m. Does the committee want to come back? It would give us about 10 minutes for a quick round of questions and answers. We could do four minutes per side and at least get in one set of questions, if our three panellists are willing to stick around and grab a coffee while we're out of the room.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John Aldag
All right, we'll suspend now. We'll come back as soon as the vote is over and we'll pick it up again.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John Aldag
We're back in session now.
Doctor Locke, you had wanted to review two slides quickly before we moved into our questions. We have them queued up here, I believe. We'll go to those and then we'll go into some really abbreviated rounds of questions.
Chair, Beyond the Aichi Targets Task Force, International Union for Conservation of Nature World Commission on Protected Areas (IUCN), As an Individual
Thanks, Mr. Aldag.
I touched on this. This is a map of the world's soil organic carbon. You hear a lot about the carbon above ground in tropical rainforests and how we need to save those forests, but the way carbon works in the world on land is that it's in one of three places. It's above the ground, in trees and other things—we're all carbon, by the way—or in temperate regions, where it's half in the soil and half in the vegetation, or in northern latitudes it's almost entirely in the soil.
Two of the greatest carbon storehouses in the world are in Canada around the James Bay lowlands and the Mackenzie basin downstream from Great Slave Lake.
Why is that important? If we mobilize that carbon by draining it, it goes into the sky and it becomes a huge source of emissions. Interestingly, there's a fantastic overlap between where carbon is in Canada and where caribou are. If we follow the science on maintaining caribou in the country, we need to keep two-thirds of the caribou range intact or we lose them. It's really simple. It's an ironclad thing. It's been agreed, even in federal-provincial-territorial agreements in the NWT, that if we fragment caribou habitat below a third, we lose them, period.
So the opportunity to get a twofer by protecting carbon in these two places and protecting caribou is fantastic. It's a really important climate change mitigation or avoidance strategy. Draining them will be a catastrophe for the earth.
Similarly, in the Amazon, we need to keep the forest there because the forest generates rain, not only because of the species that live there, but the intactness of the large tropical forests in the Amazon—and the Congo basin—actually generates rain. What that relationship has to do with you and me is that the rainfall in the Amazon drives the snow pack in the Sierra Nevada in California, which drives the production of vegetables that all of us eat in the winter from the central valley of California. There are some estimates that if 20% of the Amazon were cleared—and it's at 18% now—it would shut down and the system would lose resilience and flip to what's called a savannah, which would mean there would be the odd tree with a lot of grass and it would look like the Serengeti. In that case, that rain cycle would shut down and the consequences would be inconceivably bad.
The same applies if we mobilize this organic carbon in northern Canada. We need to think about nature not only as the species and the animals running around, but also as these values. These large wilderness areas generate these enormous values of storing carbon, giving us a stable climate, giving us rainfall. That's part of that third category I talked about in my remarks.
This is a map of the distribution of large mammals, carnivores and ungulates in North America in the past and in the present.
What you see is that in this part of the world there were a lot of large mammals. There were buffalo in Buffalo, New York, for example—or bison. What you see is a range contraction north and west. What happens as we fragment, as we farm, is that we lose large mammals. A really simple rule is the more we reduce their habitat, the more we lose them. In these regions especially, we need to keep big systems of interconnected protected areas. To give you an example, look at where those distributions are in the past, on the left, where the colours are hot; on the right, where there are none, in white. Those are the great farmed areas of the central U.S. That's where all the corn and wheat is grown. You can see a complete diminution, or the dropping out and loss of large mammals.
Where the colours remain hot is exactly where the large protected areas are, which is why the comment about large interconnected protected areas in condition two is so important. We simply won't keep large mammals if we don't have large protected areas that are interconnected.
We need to do the three things across the landscape, and that's my extra two minutes. Thank you.
