Thank you, David.
As Trevor said earlier, we approach our work with a community-first approach. We know that in the long term, conservation will only be sustainable in the Arctic if it's community driven and community supported and provides benefits to those communities.
We have a long-time presence in Nunavut. I have been there for over 20 years now and I am based there. I know that working with communities is often difficult, and it's difficult for governments to do when they're far away. However, it is incredibly rewarding, and ultimately it is the only path to truly sustainable change.
We're thrilled with Canada's commitment toward marine conservation. We're thrilled that it was adopted in the government platform and then repeated in the Obama-Trudeau joint statement. It was said there to be a milestone and not a destination. We think that's important.
As has been pointed to earlier, there is a developing consensus around the world that 10% will not be enough. The figure of 30% has been put forward by the World Parks Congress as a number that is probably a bare minimum. In the Arctic, in a region that is experiencing so much change, 30% is probably not sufficient. We're probably looking at a much higher number, closer to 50%, as was stated earlier.
With regard to how to get there, the first step is to finish what has started. When looking at the national marine conservation area for Lancaster Sound that the communities have been requesting for over 30 years, it would be timely to get on with that and to protect the whole region that the communities have been asking for.
There's also a great opportunity in the Arctic to move toward the interim goals of 5% and 10%, particularly when we look at the government's approach of ensuring that large pristine areas are protected. The Arctic certainly has many of those.
We know that ecologically and biologically significant areas have been broadly identified, mapped, and described within Canada's Arctic marine environment. That should be the starting point for new consultations with northern communities for new marine protected areas.
We do have to streamline this approach. Seven years, which is the minimum that it has taken up to now to create a marine protected area, just won't get us to those goals in a timely way.
We offer some recommendations.
Identification of sites should be community driven. There's no disagreement on that. Inuit are the holders of traditional and local knowledge. They are the ones who bear all of the risks and receive the benefits associated with the marine use in their areas.
We must also look at other biologically important areas that may not be immediately adjacent to communities but that are still important for the biodiversity of the region, to ensure that the areas close to these communities are also well connected.
Looking at ecologically and biologically significant areas that are outside of immediate adjacency from communities or outside of land claim areas is also very important.
We suggest the last ice area. The last ice area is the area where summer sea ice is going to retreat to over the coming decades. We know from projections that the last summer sea ice—summer sea ice is an incredibly important habitat, as is the ice edge—is retreating, and the last remnants of it will be in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago or north of the Arctic Archipelago. We propose that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans should be looking for significant protection for this area.
We also suggest an area called the Pikialasorsuaq. That's a Greenlandic word for “upwelling” and refers to the North Water Polynya, the most productive polynya in the Arctic. A polynya is an area that stays free of ice, even in the winter. This area, which is shared between Greenland and Canada, with much of it on the Canadian side, is the most important area in which to feed for plankton and phytoplankton in all of the eastern Arctic waters.
At the moment there is an Inuit-led commission, the Pikialasorsuaq Commission, that is considering the future of this area. Certainly the Department of Fisheries and Oceans should be looking to their report, which is due out by the end of this calendar year, but we submit that we should be looking for the department to engage in discussions of the possible protection of the area as a large pristine area.
We also believe that there needs to be thought given to Inuit impact and benefit agreements to streamline the process. In a region where poverty is endemic, these agreements are extremely important for community and economic development, and there is economic and community development that can happen from conservation.
We also know that across the Arctic there are four land claim regions, and each holds different sets of rights. We recommend that the Government of Canada create an equitable and transparent financing formula, as well as high minimum standards, for community management for the impact and benefit agreements across all four land claims. It's critical that these negotiations be transparent, parallel, and rise to the highest level, not fall to the lowest floor. It's critical that these negotiations begin with Inuit organizations immediately and in parallel to the identification process.
With regard to minimum standards, setting minimum standards for the creation of marine protected areas does not end up being a completely new negotiation of regulations for each one. Setting minimum standards is important to not only streamline the process but also to ensure that protected areas are not just paper parks or lines on a map, that they actually do protect the biodiversity and provide benefit for the communities that are nearby.
Mineral and energy resource assessments, or MERAs, are currently required before an area is protected by a policy that was adopted some time ago. They often take a lot of time and they end up stalling the process. In the case of the Lancaster Sound national marine conservation area, the MERA has been a bone of contention.
We submit that this policy should be revisited. It is discretionary. Its application should be revisited, and it should be updated into the modern era to reflect all of the concerns that communities have now, not just the concerns about petroleum development.