Thank you very much.
My name is Bill Wareham. I am with the David Suzuki Foundation. I've been working in the non-profit environmental sector for about 30 years, primarily in western Canada, and I've been with the Suzuki Foundation for about 14 years now.
On behalf of the Suzuki Foundation, I just want to thank your committee for inviting us to speak to you about the establishment of marine protected areas in Canada. The foundation appreciates your inquiry on how we can best meet our commitments to secure our natural marine heritage through the establishment of marine protected areas.
For the purposes of this presentation, I'll consider as protected areas those areas established by DFO, by Environment and Climate Change Canada, and by Parks Canada, knowing that there are different designation tools but we frame them all as marine protected areas.
The Suzuki Foundation's interest here is because the protection of nature and the application of resource management practices based on the principle of ecosystem-based management is one of our long-standing objectives. We see protected areas as one of the essential management tools in this overall frame of ocean management. We strongly believe that human systems, both cultural and economic, are interconnected and interdependent. We propose that without healthy, productive natural systems, both cultural and economic traditions and opportunities are diminished, and in the worst cases, as we have seen on both coasts, can be eliminated.
Every day the Suzuki Foundation hears from Canadians who ask us to uphold strong values for nature, environmental rights, collaboration, and respect for indigenous culture and rights. It's based on these values that we have committed to work in collaboration with indigenous people, communities, and commercial stakeholders to seek solutions aimed at protecting the coastal ocean and resources that we all depend on.
As we do, I ask that you view the oceans and the protection of our ocean environments in the same context as safeguarding freshwater systems for clean drinking water and agriculture, or saving forests and wetlands to control hydrologic systems, or maintaining clean air to accommodate overall human health and prevent harmful substances from entering our environment. We see this issue of protecting oceans through the management of protected areas as fundamental as caring for the rest of the landscape.
In the context of the 10% target, we are encouraged by the federal government's stated commitment to realize the international commitment to protect biodiversity and establish marine protected areas for at least 10%—and we underscore the “at least” because we do believe it's a floor and not a ceiling. How Canada attains this level of protection is a question that many Canadians have grappled with for decades. We commend the government for its efforts to take this bold step, and we feel strongly that enhanced effort is required to meet these objectives.
The Aichi targets have set a challenge for Canada to seriously consider the benefits of spatial protection. At present, we do not feel there is enough being done, or at a significant enough scale, to truly reduce the risks facing our oceans. Given that Canada has in the order of only 1% of its marine protected areas established now, we have an enormous but inspiring task ahead of us. Although we view these targets as a strong basis for action, we also strongly advise the committee to consider that the ecological values that are being conserved and the ultimate health of the oceans and the marine life are the two metrics that we should measure our performance against.
Why MPAs? Canada's oceans are a gift of abundance in productive capacity that is spectacular, yet very vulnerable at the same time. It is a system so complex that even our best scientists do not fully understand it, which accordingly requires precautionary management to minimize the risk to its healthy functioning. We believe that a proactive effort must be undertaken to ensure that the maintenance and recovery of natural systems and the species they support is paramount. We view marine protected areas as an important tool in the mix of management strategies required to meet this goal. Even within the context of marine protected areas, there is a range of management options, tools, and designations that create a matrix of protection measures that ultimately, we hope, can meet that overarching goal of protecting biodiversity and recovering degraded populations of species.
What is needed? In our view, our oceans need to be managed with an overarching framework, with goals and objectives that serve our commitments to protect biodiversity as per our biodiversity convention and the Canadian biodiversity targets, to ensure food security, and to support economic opportunity. In that context, we ask that marine protected areas and other effective area-based measures be used to ensure this long-term health of the marine system.
We propose that, as a country with a relatively high standard of living, Canada has a great opportunity to get it right by being precautionary and finding the effective means to manage, protect, and build our understanding of ocean ecosystems so that they continue to provide a bounty of food and of cultural and economic opportunity to Canadians. Whether the ultimate outcome is 10% or 50% protection, we believe that success will be realized by ensuring application of the correct management tools and conservation practices required by specific ecological values and conservation needs.
Protected areas must be effective, and there is significant evidence from around the globe in regard to what kinds of conditions and management practices result in effective protection.
To be successful in realizing marine biodiversity, conservation, and protected areas goals, we recommend that the government significantly increase its investment, capacity, and funding in the responsible agencies; support interagency decision structures to address overlapping mandates; establish effective governance structures with indigenous communities; accelerate the stakeholder engagement process; ensure comprehensive consultation; undertake appropriate cultural, scientific, and economic analysis to inform the decision-making process; ensure that effective monitoring enforcement mechanisms are in place; and continue scientific study to enable adaptive management and continued learning about our collective effects on ocean health.
Those are some of the key things. I'll send you a paper we have that has more context on some of the issues I've raised, which you can read. For now I'll summarize some of the key things that fall under international commitments.
We feel that Canada has made bold commitments on the convention on biodiversity. We've made commitments around the CBD targets. There's a lot of rationale for MPAs. There is a lot of science evidence and there are a lot of economic benefits that can be developed out of MPAs.
The biggest thing for us is really accepting that we don't know what's going on out there. Oceanographic conditions are changing in ways that we haven't seen before. Changing ocean conditions, oceanographic movements of warm waters, and acidic water and such things are changing both the distribution and abundance of species, and we need to learn more about these so that we don't risk eliminating species inadvertently by overharvesting in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We also see a very strong public perspective for MPAs. You'll get more evidence for this, I'm sure, from the World Wildlife Fund, but they conducted a poll this last year on the perspective of Canadians in regard to marine protected areas, and there's very strong evidence. More than 98% of Canadians support the creation of marine protected areas, 87% say that the current levels of protection are not enough, and 90% believe that there should be a minimum standard for MPAs.
That's one of the issues for us: setting minimum standards and really trying to understand what we need to do to constitute a protected area and define it formally vis-à-vis other types of management in the system that also offer some forms of protection but may not be in the same frame as the protected area that people have in their minds or that our legislation accommodates designating.
There's been a lot of effort on the west coast, where most of my experience is, and the paper outlines some of the things we've done in regard to MPAs and some of the challenges we have going forward.
With respect to our performance to date, the question for us is whether we are doing enough, and the short answer is no.
I'll give an explanation why I think that's the case. We've been at this for years. I have personally been working on this issue for more than 20 years on the west coast, and we don't have a lot of results to show for it. There are some small results, but on an area basis, they're miniscule in comparison with what we're trying to achieve with the 10%-plus target.
There's an enormous amount of work to do, and we can't see any other variable than putting more resources and capacity toward the file. We're falling behind other global developed nations in establishment of MPAs, so we think there's a need to accelerate our efforts to meet what we think is our responsibility globally.
The issue of indigenous protection and indigenous co-governance is very important to us. Particularly on the west coast there's a need to define how we can engage the reconciliation commitments and marine conservation and marine economic opportunities together to benefit communities, particularly those of coastal first nations, which depend on those areas for food and subsistence.
I'll summarize with some concluding recommendations. One is, as I mentioned, maintaining ecological integrity. Two is maintaining commitments around the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Three is that protected areas should be defined using rigorous science and evidence. Four is that we really need to engage marine planning within the broader oceanscape so that we can contextualize where we put those MPAs.
There are two more quick points, the first on current funding levels. We've asked through the Green Budget Coalition for additional funding to go to each of the agencies. Second, the interagency requirement to collaborate is key, because that's where we see a lot of the bottleneck.
I'll leave it at that. In closing comments, again thank you for providing the opportunity. I'm happy to answer any questions in regard to the points I've raised.