Prime Minister Mark Carney unveils $3.8-billion nature conservation strategy
· Toronto Sun
OTTAWA — A new strategy to protect Canada’s lands was unveiled by Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday.
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Entitled A Force of Nature: Canada’s Strategy to Protect Nature , the $3.8 billion plan is intended to protect, restore and maintain habitats, align industrial frameworks to fit with the government’s conservation efforts, and support efforts to restore at-risk animal populations.
“Canada is home to 20% of the world’s freshwater, 25% of the world’s wetlands, almost a quarter of the world’s boreal forest, more than 80,000 species from the iconic polar bears, beavers, Canada geese, to the unique eastern wolf, Vancouver Island marmot, and the Peary caribou,” Carney said during a news conference late Tuesday morning in Wakefield, Que., about 35 km north of Ottawa.
“Nature is also an asset which provides a flow of goods and services over time.”
Plan fulfills 2022 conservation pledge
The plan, the PMO says, is a means to fulfill promises Canada made during the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montréal, joining with 195 other nations to protect 30% of the world’s lands and waters by 2030.
Canada’s new strategy aims to nearly double Canada’s terrestrial conservation from 14% to the intended 30% in time for the 2030 deadline, and increase marine conservation from 15% to 28% — a goal the government claims will put it on the pathway to 30%.
The plan will fund up to 14 new marine protected and conservation areas, as well as at least 10 new national parks and freshwater marine conservation areas — a plan the government says will protect 1.6 million sq. km. of land and up to 700,000 sq. km. of oceans over the next four years.
The plan will also spend $90 million to support recovery of at-risk Wood Bison populations along the Alberta-Northwest Territories border.
Private investment sought
The plan will also impact industry, and who and where to build.
“Through more comprehensive mapping of our nature, we’ll have a better understanding of the biodiversity and carbon sequestration capacity across Canada,” Carney said. “That improved mapping will create predictable pathways for project approvals and catalyze investment in conservation.”
This conservation strategy, Carney said, will involve more than just tax dollars.
“Nature can be a force for good, it mobilizes private capital that protects the environment,” he said. “When the private sector incorporates reducing emissions and protecting nature in their value chains, they have greater incentives to invest and are more motivated to reduce practices that result in habitat loss and pollution.”
The strategy will also launch an expert taskforce on natural capital accounting and nature financing — a means to integrate the environment into economic and corporate decision making.
Set to launch this spring, the task force will recommend new policy and tools to encourage conservation-minded investment.