In less than three years, Canada has to increase the amount of land and inland waters it protects by 60 per cent to meet a commitment under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

The commitment requires signatories to legally designate 17 per cent as “protected areas.” Those can include national, provincial and territorial parks, as well as Indigenous protected areas, tribal parks and privately protected spaces. But to qualify, the areas must be closed to industrial activity.

It’s not going to be easy.

At last count, Canada protects a mere 10.6 per cent of its land and inland waters. That’s compared to Venezuela (53.9 per cent protected), Brazil (29.5 per cent protected) and Australia (17 per cent protected).

Canada is officially behind every other G7 country on this front.

“In the last decade — from 2006 to 2016 — we’ve only protected two per cent of our landbase,” said Alison Ronson, national director of the parks program for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, in an interview with DeSmog Canada. “We just need our government to do more. Often, they make announcements that they’re going to protect an area, but then they don’t put that area into a legal designation.”

With such slow progress, time is running out to act.

Canada Has 3 Years to Increase Protected Areas by 60% And, Um, It’s Not Gonna Be Easy https://t.co/fYaKk1s34X @cpaws @ParksCanada #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/Qx88EUkiPF

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 25, 2017

Scientific Consensus Suggests Countries Must Protect More Than 50% of Land

Canada signed on to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in 2010.

As with many environmental pledges made under former prime minister Stephen Harper, there were few steps actually taken to meet that target. But Ronson said that “not a lot has happened under the new government,” aside from announcing a new national park in Manitoba and opening the Mealy Mountains National Park Reserve in Newfoundland (which was announced in 2010 under the Conservatives).

However, she did note that the Liberals have kicked off a process to at least get the country to meet its commitments by 2020.

In March 2016, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then-president Barack Obama made a joint announcement that included: “Canada and the U.S. re-affirm our national goals of protecting at least 17 per cent of land areas and 10 per cent of marine areas by 2020. We will take concrete steps to achieve and substantially surpass these national goals in the coming years.”

The latter sentence is key. Ronson emphasized that 17 per cent by 2020 is simply an “interim target,” and there’s a growing scientific consensus that countries need to be protecting at least half of their landscapes.

That’s right, half.

The vast 68,000 square kilometer wilderness of the Yukon’s Peel watershed is the northern anchor of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. Photo by Juri Peepre via Flickr

Some Protected Areas Allow Industrial Activities

Another major problem is the actual quality of the protection.

The federal Liberals have already demonstrated that they’re willing to make concessions to industry pressures with the potential allowance of oil and gas exploration in the Laurentian Channel, a proposed Marine Protected Area off the coast of Newfoundland. As previously reported by DeSmog Canada, such a capitulation has angered many in the scientific community, with oil and gas activities in the region undermining any other formal protections.

The same applies to protected land bases.

Ronson said that “across the country, we see protected area legislation that’s fairly weak and allows the ministers a lot of discretion to allow activities which should just be de facto absent from a protected area.”

ICYMI: Industry Sways Feds to Allow Offshore Drilling in Laurentian Channel Marine Protected Area

For instance, in Alberta, the responsible minister can allow rights-of-way and industrial activity within protected areas on a case-by-case basis.

This situation is complicated further by the role of privately protected spaces, such as those held by the Nature Conservancy of Canada, which buys up land and announces it as protected. Ronson noted that often private protection isn’t enough to extinguish some mineral rights, meaning it’s not fully protected from future industrial activities.

Such private lands often protect rare ecosystems like grasslands and Carolinian forests. But she emphasized that “the biggest opportunity in Canada for land protection is on public lands.”

Indigenous Circle of Experts Gathering Perspectives on Process

There’s also huge potential in the process for the expanded acknowledgment of Indigenous sovereignty and stewardship.

To reach “Canada Target 1” of 17 per cent protected areas by 2020, the federal government created three roundtables of sorts. They include the National Steering Committee (including directors of provincial and federal environment and parks departments), the National Advisory Panel (providing recommendations “reflecting a broad spectrum of perspectives”) and the Indigenous Circle of Experts.

Eli Enns, a Nuu-chah-nulth Canadian political scientist and co-chair of the Indigenous Circle of Experts, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that they’re in the process of completing four regional gatherings to gather perspectives on how to meet Target 1 in the spirit and practice of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

He said the outcome will include a written report and a narrative in the Indigenous oral tradition that won’t be written down but instead be provided in spoken form to the ministers.

“In broad terms, the recommendation would be to honour the treaties,” he said. “The so-called historical treaties have not been honoured. But they do have a lot of potential to give us guidance and help us to achieve our biodiversity targets such as Target 1.

“As soon as you talk to the elders about Target 1, the kneejerk reaction is to say ‘you’re richer than you think.’ Because built into the treaties themselves are ideas, values and laws of respecting the land and respecting one another. These treaties, which are sometimes referred to as numbered treaties, are actually peace and friendship treaties.”

ICYMI: ‘It’s No Longer About Saying No’: How B.C.’s First Nations Are Taking Charge With Tribal Parks

There have already been a series of protected areas created in collaboration with Indigenous communities, including Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve in Haida Gwaii and the proposed Thaidene Nëné National Park Reserve in the Northwest Territories (national park reserves specifically allow Indigenous communities to continue traditional land use practices in the region).

Other Indigenous conserved areas, including Dasiquox Tribal Park in Tsilhqot’in territory and K’ih tsaa?dze in Doig River territory, could receive provincial or federal regognition.

CPAWS Outlined Nine Steps To Help Reach 2020 Target

In its most recent report on protected areas, titled “From Laggard to Leader?” CPAWS listed nine “overarching recommendations” for immediate progress.

They include the implementation of existing commitments to protect land and inland waters, planning beyond 2020 to ensure that at least half of Canada’s land base will be rapidly protected, banning the issuing of permits for industrial development in such areas and developing “landscape scale ecological connectivity strategies.”

It also zeroed in on 13 opportunities for “early action on-the-ground” including the Peel River Watershed in the Yukon, the South Okanagan-Similkameen National Park Reserve in B.C., the Bighorn Backcountry in Alberta, the Saskatchewan Grasslands and the Three Wild Watersheds in Western Quebec. They’re all places where governments have been working for a long time, often with Indigenous partners.

Source: CPAWS Parks Report 2017

Almost everything that needs to happen for the process is already known. The challenge now is simply implementing such knowledge.

Ronson said she suspects the lack of inaction on the subject has been entirely due to a lack of political will. But that may be slowly changing.

“We’re really encouraged that a lot of people are paying attention to parks this year,” she said. “Obviously, a lot of it has to do with the free access to national parks. But we’re hoping that people will realize that parks and protected areas are important not only for protecting species at risk and maintaining biodiversity in our country, but they’re also really important for us: they provide us with clean air and fresh water, and also when people connect with nature they see extremely important physical and mental wellness benefits.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Connection to the land and ocean has guided the Ahousaht people throughout their history and that bond is now at the root of a new sustainable economic development plan for the First Nation whose territory spans the heart of the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

Under the first phase of the plan, announced Thursday, there will be no mining or industrial logging in Ahousaht traditional territory and about 80 per cent of almost 171,000 hectares will be set aside as cultural and natural areas “to conserve biological diversity, natural landscapes and wilderness and to provide to Ahousaht continued spiritual, cultural and sustenance use.”

During recent years there has been controversy in Ahousaht territory over a proposed open pit copper mine on Catface Mountain on Flores Island and over old-growth logging, which was halted after Ahousaht hereditary chiefs declared a moratorium in 2015.

Another source of dissention has been salmon farms, which have operated in the area for several decades and employ Ahousaht members, and there will be community discussions before any decision is made on their future, hereditary Chief Maquinna Lewis George said at the announcement in Tofino.

The plan says no uses will be allowed that undermine community food fish resources.

“The economic sustainability of our community must be underpinned by sustainable marine and land use planning and that is where we are starting today,” Maquinna said.

The land use vision is the culmination of two years of community work led by the Maaqutusiis Hahoutlhee Stewardship Society, which represents the Ahousaht hereditary chiefs, with technical support from The Nature Conservancy, which has committed to raise a stewardship endowment fund to help implement the land use vision.

“This is the largest leap forward in old-growth forest conservation in over two decades on Vancouver Island,” Ken Wu, executive director of Ancient Forest Alliance, told DeSmog Canada.

The Ahousaht First Nation has more old-growth forests in their traditional territory — both in terms of percentage and in terms of remaining hectares — than any First Nation band on B.C.’s southern coast, he said.

“Their plan raises the bar for conservation across Vancouver Island…where only about 20 per cent of the remaining old-growth forests still stand.” 

Nature Conservancy executive director Hadley Archer said the plan is “a blueprint for a sustainable future rooted in sacred cultural values and protective of a globally significant ecosystem.”

This #FirstNation Just Banned Industrial Logging and Mining from #VancouverIsland Territory https://t.co/kQO0KVOPpS #bcpoli #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/w0EoyWC0X6

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 28, 2017

Ahousaht, which has about 2,000 members with one-third living on reserve, also received a financial boost last summer when Premier Christy Clark announced $1.25 million in economic development funds for the community over the next five years.

Hereditary Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo said the vision of a more diversified, sustainable local economy, with development of tourism opportunities and community forestry reaffirms traditional teachings that the Ahousaht people are inextricably linked to the natural world.

“This bold vision brings certainty to the future of old-growth forests and ensures functioning marine and aquatic ecosystems into the next millennia. It is a proud day to be Ahousaht,” he said.

The plan divides the territory into seven land use management areas that are designed to protect Ahousaht cultural and heritage resources, maintain and enhance the Ahousaht way of life, protect and maintain biological diversity and natural environments and provide community development opportunities.

Possible activities in the different zones include community infrastructure construction, light industrial development, run-of-river hydro-electric development, tourism and hospitality development, silviculture, food and community timber harvesting.

The plan is being applauded by environmental groups who praised Ahousaht leaders for taking a principled stand to protect their territory.

The land use visions “steps up to meet the environmental and social imperatives of the 21st century with solutions for rainforest conservation and community benefits within their famous territory, located in one of the most beautiful and ecologically rich landscapes in the world,” said Valerie Langer of Stand.earth.

Nuu-chah-nulth political scientist Eli Enns, North American regional coordinator for the Indigenous Peoples and Community Conserved Territories and Areas Consortium, said the agreement is part of a pattern of hereditary chiefs working for sustainable use of their territories.

The Ahousaht people always managed their territory in a sustainable fashion, but, in recent decades the community faced the frustration of seeing the decline of the fisheries and forestry sectors because of reckless decisions made by the provincial government, Enns said.

There was also the irritation of being left out of the booming tourism industry in other parts of Clayoquot Sound, such as Tofino, he said.

“A lot of the emotion of the last 15 to 20 years has been because of trying to transition, but also it has been a call for support,” Enns said, pointing out that many community members continue to struggle with the fallout from residential schools.

“I think the most important story here is resilience. People still know who they are and they still have their values,” he said.

Image: Old-growth forest in the Sydney Valley that will be protected within the Ahousaht Land Use Plan. Photo: TJ Watt via the Ancient Forest Alliance

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

When the Catalyst Paper Company’s pulp mill was renovated in the 1980s, ancestral remains of the Halalt First Nation were found underneath a cement helicopter pad. The discovery was yet another piece of evidence that the mill, located in Crofton, B.C. about 45 kilometres north of Victoria, was built on culturally sensitive First Nation’s territory.

But according to the Halalt First Nation, cultural damage is only a part of the harm caused by the industrial facility, operating since 1957, that is responsible for the release of endocrine-disrupting and cancer-causing dioxins and furans into the local environment.

According to Eli Enns, director of operations for the Halaht, the ongoing pollution in the region is wreaking havoc on the local environment.

“You have the Crofton mill itself which has unfortunately cemented right over sacred burial sites of the Halalt Coast Salish peoples,” Enns says in a new film, premiered by the nation here on DeSmog Canada (see below).

“It has totally destroyed the estuary and traditional food systems for the Halalt. It has inundated the airshed with all kinds of toxic pollutants which will probably have long lasting and unpredictable effects on the health of the Halalt people and other local communities.”

Dioxins and furans, the byproduct of a chlorine bleaching process, bioaccumulate in the food chain and are stored in the fatty tissues of animals. The presence of dioxins in animals has been linked to birth defects, spontaneous abortions and tumors.

A 1991 report prepared for the B.C. Aquaculture Research and Development Council found blue heron near the Crofton mill suffering reproductive failure contained high levels of dioxins in their tissue.

Enns says the pollution has severely impacted the community and its ability to live in and off the land.

“The community’s use and enjoyment of their own village has been highly intruded upon,” he said.

The federal government released new rules regulating the release of dioxins and furans from pulp and paper mills in 1992, although for communities living near major polluters like the Crofton mill, it was too little too late. Major damage to fisheries near Crofton led to permanent closures in the Crofton region.

Enns told DeSmog Canada that new regulations or cleaner operations won’t help resolve the mill’s legacy pollution issues.

“There is no elimination that has happened.”

In 2015 Environment Canada listed the Crofton mill as the third largest source of air pollution in B.C. for 2013.

“Obviously you can create regulations on things but that doesn’t mean everyone is complying,” Enns said.

“There was unregulated polluting for a long time and now there may be certain measure that have been put into place to reduce those dioxins and furans but they are are still causing damage.”

The Halalt First Nation has launched a legal suit against Catalyst, claiming damages of $2 billion for impacts to biodiversity and local ecosystems as well as interference with aboriginal rights.

A second suit, launched by the Halalt along with two business partners —Sunvault Energy Inc. and Aboriginal Power Corp — claims an additional $100 million in damages as well as an injunction to permanently stop the mill’s activities.

The two cases were launched in January but have yet to make their way to the courts.

Halalt First Nations Elder Joseph Norris says he can recall his grandfather negotiating with the pulp mill in the 50s for the relocation of his people’s remains.

“They moved us out of there to where we are. He told them, ‘give us the opportunity to remove some of our ancient bones’…they didn’t care, they just built over [them],” Norris says in the film.

“The Halalt has taken the pulp mill to court… we’re not against what they’re doing and they have a lot of people working for them — but it’s what their distributing into our rivers and into our air.”

WATCH: Halalt #FirstNation’s Fight Against #VancouverIsland Pulp Mill Pollution https://t.co/lhaZ2WhoD7 #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/H18M6ceY11

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 20, 2016

Chief James Thomas of the Halalt First Nation says that before the mill was constructed his people were able to harvest seafood from the area without concern. Now, elevated levels of toxins present in the water have made it unsafe to do so.

“The carcinogens end up in the phytoplankton, the plankton feed the other animals and at the end of the day ends up in the food chain,” he said. “It accumulates faster probably in the birds than it does in us.”

“We’re not allowed to eat crabs out here anymore because of the dioxins and furans levels.”

Bill Bonsall, a Crofton resident and former cattle rancher, said his family has been on a local farm since 1873 and has since had to stop raising cows because of health problems they’ve traced back to contaminated water.

“If the cows don’t live on a farm you don’t make much money,” he said.

“The estuary is totally destroyed. It’s a disaster area now. How the hell are you going to live off the land when there’s nothing there?”

“I can remember this place for 80 years, vividly. I know there was fish in the creek, there were birds — it was beautiful.”

“There used to be seven oyster farms in the neighbourhood. Now there’s none, hasn’t been since the mill came in,” Bonsall says.

Chief Thomas says the entire region has been closed to fisheries because of the mill.

“You have a huge dead zone with no oxygen levels in this territory,” he says. “So baby fish coming out of the creek at the end of his knoll here, they go out there and their first breath in the ocean is in a zone with no oxygen."

For the Halalt, the negative effect of the mill on the environment means the end of a way of life.

“They’re destroying our way of life for the almighty dollar,” Thomas says. “We’re a non-treaty band, we’ve never extinguished anywhere our rights and titles.”

Thomas said elders in his community are passing away as the nation waits for resolution. He said ultimately the federal government is responsible for issuing the permits necessary to pollute.

For Norris, an elder participating in the battle, there is still a lesson to be learned from his grandfather’s teaching that you only take what you need.

“The younger generation needs to hear what it was like yesterday so they can build a better tomorrow,” he says.

Image: Crofton mill. Harvard Photos/Facebook

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.