Thank you.
I feel very humbled by the former two speakers, because I think they have probably a lot more wisdom to impart to you than I have, being a mere academic. I've been asked to talk about things slightly differently, in terms of the role of the north and these protected areas in mitigating climate change. I will keep my comments very brief, in the interests of time.
I want to point out a few things. First of all, I think as we move forward to try to meet our international obligations under the Paris agreement, we will need to have biological solutions and not just engineering solutions. By this I mean that we have to look at what solutions the forests and lands—wetlands in particular and agricultural lands—will contribute towards our obligations. I will explore that for a little bit.
The second part of my presentation is to emphasize the importance of the aboriginal peoples' engagement and involvement with finding solutions, both for protected area conservation issues and as well for climate change issues.
Finally, I want to make some comments about policy certainty and the kinds of things I think need to be addressed.
On the forests and the reason I think looking at biological solutions to our climate change problems is important, if you look at the data from 2014 you'll see that forest fires in Canada contributed more emissions—and this is particularly from northern Canada—than all transportation emissions. This means that we're looking at 25% of emissions coming directly from natural processes. Many of these fires, of course, occurred where aboriginal people live.
We can't ignore these natural dynamics. We have similar challenges around insects. Whether it's mountain pine beetles, spruce beetles, or spruce budworms, we see emissions associated with these natural forces from these insects that also contribute a great deal to our emissions problem.
Finally, there's what we call pathogens or diseases, which also affect the health of the forest. Together, fire, insects, and disease probably are the single largest contributor to our emissions—even greater, frankly, than the tar sands.
In terms, then, of how we manage protected areas, I think it goes without saying that it doesn't mean no management. It means that we need to engage aboriginal people in the co-management of these vast areas and that we have to deal with some of these biological processes if we want to deal with the climate change problem.
I'm an economist by training. I will say that the neoclassical approach or the approach we've taken to land management generally in the north has been very hands-off, reflecting what we refer to as extensive management. That's no longer sufficient, if we really want to intervene and deal with some of the biological problems that I've outlined, the fire, insects, and disease.
The boilerplate solution that we can contribute from a forest point of view is to plant more trees. We can afforest more areas, we can reduce waste and emissions through sustainable forest management, we can use more wood in construction rather than concrete, steel, and aluminum, or we can use more wood for our energy. We have 136 aboriginal communities on diesel power plants in Canada, and all of them could be switched, in most cases to bioenergy.
I think there's a lot we can do that would be consistent with some of the goals that first nations and aboriginal communities have set up.
I can only briefly touch on wetlands and say that's 12% of the area of Canada. Within these wetlands, much of it in northern Canada, the melting or the warming in permafrost regions is going to lead to a lot of methane gases, which have high intensity with them as compared to CO2. This could be, as my son described it to me this morning, a methane bomb. When we are establishing a policy around protected areas, we are going to have to struggle with that issue. Unfortunately, from a science point of view, we understand very little about it, because we have very poor information and poor data.
There are solutions that are possible in protected areas by using different management techniques, such as biodegradable roads and wetland mitigation banking systems, that have been set up and that are pervasive in the U.S, and so on.
Finally, on the agricultural side, we know that agriculture contributes currently about 10% to our emissions in Canada, and much of that is concentrated in the prairie provinces. We do have to look at that, at the land uses that we undertake, and particularly at the use of fossil fuel-based fertilizers, animals, and what to do about methane.
There are a number of things that could be done. You may be aware of no-tillage policies, biochars, and more examination of “close to nature” agriculture. I do see in all these three areas that there are solutions. Let me emphasize that—and I'm dealing with this on an almost daily basis now—the future management of many of these national areas and protected areas has to be with aboriginal communities. Maybe, because I'm based in British Columbia, it's more intense here, but from what I heard on the call today, it's equally important in all the northern regions.
What do I recommend then in closing? We have to see these forests and wetlands as managed landscapes. Protected areas where you say there is no management is probably a figment of our imagination, and the aboriginal groups I've worked with don't look at parks as protected areas the same way as some environmental NGOs. I'm supporting them in saying we have to manage. I don't think the way we managed in the past is the way we want to move forward in the future, particularly if we want to meet our obligations for climate change.
I want to say that there is also a lot scope in development, and I guess this is where the universities play a role. Information technology, and what I would call bioengineering technology, could provide us with much cleaner solutions than we have looked at today.
Finally, because of my economics background, I want to say that one of the things that needs to be done in decision-making is to create what we call marginal abatement cost curves. That means we're going to have to rank projects and technologies, and decide how we should best spend our money. Unfortunately, in Canada, we're still behind on this. We don't have good marginal abatement costers yet, but I would tell you that from all the analysis I've done over the years, biological solutions are often much more cost effective than engineering solutions.
I'm not saying it's either-or, but I'm saying to please consider that in these protected landscapes they are part of the solution to the climate change problem from a biological point of view.
Thank you.