B.C. hasn’t been particularly good at including Indigenous populations in the decision-making process. First Nations are often brought to the table after high-level political decisions have already been made — leading to significant social and legal conflict over consultation, consent and the management of natural resources.

Legal challenges of Site C, the cumulative impacts of B.C.’s sprawling oil and gas operations and the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline are all current examples of what these conflicts look like.

But it doesn’t have to be so, say a team of researchers from by the University of Victoria’s POLIS Water Sustainability Project and the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources in a new report, which proposes B.C. manage water resources via a co-governance model based on a principle of collaborative consent.

“Imagine Indigenous people being involved at the highest level of policy-making and reaching an agreement that is good for everyone,” said Merrell-Ann Phare, founding executive director of the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources and lead author of the report.

Water is a good issue for the collaborative consent approach as it concerns everyone in a community, Phare said.

Disputes between government and Indigenous communities are often clouded by a perceived need for legal clarity on rights, but there are many areas where, even without legal clarity, different levels of government are able to work out solutions, she added.

“We need to pull up the chairs to those tables for Indigenous governments and we need the federal and provincial governments to recognize that,” she said.

“Indigenous governments have a right to be there.”

Collaborative consent would not mean an end to legal challenges, but it would help find solutions to some of the battles that continue for generations, said Phare, adding that B.C. would not be breaking new ground as territorial and Indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories already use a collaborative consent approach.

Cowichan Watershed Revitalization a Collaborative Consent Success Story

A little more than a decade ago, the Cowichan watershed was a mess.

Clearcuts on surrounding slopes intensified run-off during winter storms. A 2003 drought resulted in critically low water levels that made it impossible for Chinook salmon to reach spawning grounds. Future droughts were on the horizon and water quality was threatened by sewage, fertilizer and a rapidly expanding population.

Catalyst Paper — the largest employer in the area — was on the verge of shutting down because of a water shortage.

“The management situation of the day was not working and the risks to the river and its communities were great,” says a 2014 case study of the evolution of the Cowichan Watershed Board by the University of Victoria’s POLIS Water Sustainability Project.

Management of the watershed was spread among a patchwork of federal, provincial, Indigenous and local governments, while waterfront home owners and local businesses wanted input on how to deal with ongoing droughts and the shrinking salmon runs.

There was general acknowledgement that action was needed to save Cowichan Lake and the iconic Cowichan River, but with the jigsaw of federal and provincial acts and the need for Cowichan Tribes to protect their interests, little was accomplished.

A 2007 plan set out a proactive approach to water management, but, two years later, implementation was minimal, largely because of lack of leadership and scattered responsibilities.

It was clear that a different type of management was needed, with local leadership, so, the Cowichan Watershed Board was formed with the chair of the Cowichan Valley Regional District and chief of Cowichan Tribes as joint chairs, while other agencies were encouraged follow board decisions.

That style of management typifies collaborative consent, which should be the model used in B.C. to defuse conflict around water and land use, the new report recommends.

Resolution for System of Delays, Court Cases with Water Co-Governance

Conflicts could be avoided if Indigenous governments were given an equal seat at the table at the start of a process, instead of being brought in after decisions are made, says the report.

Delays, court cases and disagreements are common as Indigenous communities battle to protect traditional territories, while other levels of government and, in some cases, major corporations, write legislation or set the rules, only to have them challenged by First Nations, who frequently claim inadequate consultation.

Collaborative consent, with all parties committed to working together as equals, takes the heat out of issues as everyone works towards decisions they can live with, says the report, which suggests that the method should be used to come up with regulations for B.C.’s new Water Sustainability Act.

Rosie Simms, co-author of the report and POLIS water law and policy researcher, said collaborative consent offers a way for B.C. to govern according to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people, as promised by Premier John Horgan.

Water is a compelling issue because jurisdictional overlaps and gaps pave the way for creative forms of co-governance, Simms said.

Indigenous History, Lessons Benefit Local Government

Back in the Cowichan Valley, the collaboration has helped people understand the extent of Cowichan Tribes’ history in the area and traditional knowledge is now used to help inform decisions, said Chief William Seymour.

“We all have the same concerns about our watershed. The logging that went on and what happened to our streams, what happened to our water levels and the water temperature, all the issues of contamination with sewage and fertilizer going into the river — everyone in the valley has those concerns,” Seymour said.

With everyone working towards the same goals, protection of the watershed is improving, he said.

Jon Lefebure, Cowichan Valley Regional District chair, said an excellent relationship has developed between Cowichan Tribes and the district because of the equal partnership on the Watershed Board.

“It has flowed into many other things we do around land use and the opioid crisis — which has an impact on all parts of our community,” he said.

The relationship has also brought local government a new awareness of First Nations culture and the advantages offered by their history and perceptions, Lefebure said.

For example, there is an emphasis on taking only what you need and leaving the rest for future generations, as opposed to the culture of taking all you can and damn the consequences, he said.

Priorities for the watershed are based on looking at the whole system, rather than individual pieces and are guided by a traditional Cowichan Tribes lesson that “everything on this earth is what sustains us, everything on this earth is connected together,” says the POLIS case study.

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This article originally appeared on The Climate Examiner. 

British Columbia now has sufficient detailed information about the height, frequency and direction of its coastal waves to start developing and testing wave energy converters in the ocean, according to a new report.

Quantifying the amount of energy contained in waves as they propagate — or more simply, the ‘wave energy transport’ — is more complex and intricate than assessing the energy contained in wind, tidal or solar resources. In general, these energy sources can be described using a single variable; air speed, water speed and incoming solar irradiation, respectively. In contrast, wave energy transport is multi-dimensional and depends on a variety of factors.

As a result, while industry and policy-makers were aware that British Columbia has one of the best wave energy resource potentials in the world, up to now, this understanding had been based on very broad-strokes analyses. Moving beyond the global scale and understanding the spatial distribution of the wave resource, especially near-shore, is a critical step in the development of wave energy converters — the large (up to 120m in length) mechanical devices that transform wave energy into electricity.

Scientists have mapped the true potential of wave energy off the B.C. coast for the first time: https://t.co/jYpVYjNnmA @PICSCanada #climate

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 19, 2017

Researchers with the University of Victoria’s West Coast Wave Initiative developed a computer model of the B.C. coastline from the Columbia River in the south, up to Haida Gwaii in the north, and combined this with years of data from wave measurement buoys. This two-pronged approach allowed them to develop the most high-resolution wave resource assessment yet available for British Columbia, and to reveal several ideal locations for wave energy development.

Their findings together with a comprehensive plain language introduction to the concept of wave power, how wave-energy converters work, and the opportunities and challenges of this energy resource, are described in a new full-colour Wave Energy Primer recently published by PICS.

Waves arriving on B.C. shores are the result of storms occurring across the vast Pacific Ocean. This makes wave energy highly predictable for power system managers compared to other variable renewable energy sources, such as wind or solar. The West Coast Wave Initiatve has found on average, a four-hour wave forecast features just a 15 per cent margin of error, while wind and solar in the Pacific North West are closer to 77 per cent and 86 per cent, respectively.

This significantly greater forecastability means that while wave energy, like wind and solar, is intermittent, the requirements for grid back-up power source to make up for this intermittency would be significantly lower.

Other advantages uncovered by the University of Victoria team include seasonal timing, whereby the biggest (and most energetic) storms occur in winter when energy demand is highest.

Researchers from the PICS 2060 Integrated Energy Pathways project also found that the integration of a 500 MW wave energy farm has the potential to reduce Vancouver Island’s dependency on annual electrical transmission from the Lower Mainland by up to 11 per cent, and reduce peak winter demand by up to 15 per cent.

The Wave Primer also spells out other challenges facing the industry, including the high cost per unit of energy compared to other renewables, biofouling and operating in a hostile ocean environment.

Image: John Lemieux via Flickr

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Fallout from environmental assessments or development decisions that don’t meet the highest scientific standards will land on the shoulders of the younger generation, which is why Canada’s lack of scientific rigour and transparency must be addressed now, say more than 1,300 young scientists who have written an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and six cabinet ministers.

“As the next generation of scientists in Canada, we are professionally and personally affected by how government evaluates the pros and cons of development, especially large-scale infrastructure and energy projects,” said lead author Aerin Jacob, a University of Victoria postdoctoral fellow who specializes in tradeoffs between conservation planning and sustainable development.

“Reviews based on limited or biased scientific information potentially put the environment and the well-being of Canadians at risk,” she said.

Trudeau has pledged to review environmental laws that were gutted by the former Conservative government and appointed a four-person panel to look at how to ensure assessments are based on sound science. Another five-member panel is holding consultations on how to reform the National Energy Board. And there’s also a review of the Fisheries Act underway.

Early-career researchers from universities across Canada, including the top 50 research universities, signed the letter.

Most of the researchers came of scientific age during the last decade, when the Harper government muzzled scientists, changed environmental protection laws — from the Fisheries Act to the Environmental Assessment Act — and downgraded the importance of science.

In the year since the election of the Liberal government, scientists have been encouraged by Trudeau’s promises of science-based decisions and openness, but there are continuing problems with processes and transparency, they say.

“We are concerned that current environmental assessments and regulatory decision-making processes lack scientific rigour, with significant consequences for the health and environment of all Canadians,” the letter says.

“Hundreds of scholars have decried weak Canadian environmental assessments and regulatory reviews and cautioned about the risks involved in large scale energy projects,” the letter says, pointing to tragedies such as the collapse of the mine tailings pond dam at Mount Polley.

Five Ways to Fix Environmental Reviews: Young Scientists to @JustinTrudeau https://t.co/fCYPq4CMdo #cdnpoli #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 15, 2016

Caroline Fox, a postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University and co-author of the letter, said cumulative effects, including climate change, need to be considered when projects are under scrutiny.

It was one of the elements lacking during consideration of both the Enbridge Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipelines.

Other big questions are how regulators should reassess risks to respond to changing information and the best way of addressing gaps in knowledge that make it difficult to assess potential risks

Too often a proponent who cannot find information uses that gap to imply there is no risk, Jacob said.

“That’s a big problem.”

Five key recommendations from the researchers are:

1) Use the best available evidence “collected and interpreted without influence from those who stand to gain or lose from the conclusions.” In cases where there are knowledge gaps, information should be sought rather than conclusions drawn from limited information and decisions should be adapted if strong, new evidence is put forward.

2) All information from environmental assessments should be publicly available, including raw data. Ideally, such information should be collected in a free, searchable federal registry so conclusions can be verified and data can serve as a benchmark for future studies.

3) Cumulative environmental effects from past, present and future projects and activities should be considered, including global level effects where appropriate.

4) Prevent conflicts of interest by requiring public disclosure as “greater transparency will elevate public trust that decisions are based on evidence, knowledge and values.”

5) Develop explicit decision-making criteria and provide a full, transparent rationale of factors considered including risks weighed and alternatives considered. Trade-offs should be thoroughly and openly explained.

Fox and Jacob plan to make presentations to the panels looking at revamping legislation and hope that they can have in-person meetings with Trudeau or his ministers to emphasize the importance of science.

“We are passionate about using our scientific knowledge and training to serve the public good,” says the letter.

Image: Mount Polley tailings dam collapse.

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Imagine a world where average temperatures are almost 10 degrees Celsius higher than today, an Arctic with temperatures almost 20 degrees warmer and some regions deluged with four times more rain.

That is the dramatic scenario predicted by a team of climate scientists led by the University of Victoria’s Katarzyna Tokarska, who looked at what would happen if the Earth’s remaining untapped fossil fuel reserves are burned.

Tokarska, a PhD student at UVic’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, used simulations from climate models looking at the relationship between carbon emissions and warming — including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report — and concluded that known fossil fuel reserves would emit the equivalent of five trillion tonnes of carbon emissions if burned.

That would result in average global temperature increases between 6.4 degrees and 9.5 degrees Celsius, with Arctic temperatures warming between 14.7 degrees and 19.5 degrees, says the paper published Monday in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change.

“These results indicate that the unregulated exploitation of the fossil fuel resource could ultimately result in considerably more profound climate changes than previously suggested,” says the study.

“Such climate changes, if realized, would have extremely profound impacts on ecosystems, human health, agriculture, economies and other sectors.”

Simulated changes in precipitation are “extremely large,” according to the paper.

It predicts increases of more than a factor of four in areas such as the tropical Pacific and hefty decreases in precipitation over areas such as parts of Australia, the Mediterranean, southern Africa, the Amazon, Central America and North Africa.

Researchers used the lower boundary of estimates of known fossil fuels, Tokarska said in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“The (amount of untapped fossil fuels) could be much higher as we didn’t consider unconventional sources, and then the warming would be much higher,” Tokarska said.

The highest temperatures would be reached by the year 2200, but, in the meantime, temperatures will steadily increase unless mitigation measures are taken, the study finds.

“Some people say that that’s so far off, but this is profound climate change if we follow the usual scenario,” Tokarska said.

“What we are doing is showing it’s relevant to know what will happen if we don’t take any action to mitigate climate change — if we don’t ever implement the Paris agreement or other such agreements. It’s a worst-case scenario if we don’t do anything now,” she said.

The Paris agreement, adopted in December last year, sets a target of limiting global warming to below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees — a goal supported by Canada.

Based on previous research, the Earth is already halfway towards the two -degree increase in temperature and researchers are now looking at whether it is possible to reach that tougher 1.5 degree target, but Tokarska said they do not yet have those answers.

Worldwide there are growing calls for governments to enforce regulations to keep remaining fossil fuels in the ground and to speed up a move to green economies.

“On a personal level I can say this is kind of a warning message of the likely outcome so we can hopefully do some changes now,” Tokarska said.

Other authors of the paper include Nathan Gillett and Vivek Arora from the Canadian Centre of Climate Modelling and Analysis and Michael Eby and Andrew Weaver from UVic’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences.

Weaver is also leader of the B.C. Green Party.

Photo: Wendy North via Flickr.

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B.C. faces a future of disappearing salmon runs, more wildfires and dying forests with a temperature increase of two or three degrees and it is time to adapt to a new reality, a panel of experts told a packed audience at the University of Victoria’s Ideafest.   The weird weather of 2015 broke records, but it is a harbinger of the future, said Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium climate scientist Trevor Murdock, adding that models showing a two degree temperature rise are probably optimistic.   By the end of this century, if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed, there could be a temperature increase of six degrees Celsius, Murdock warned.   “With zero net greenhouse gas emissions and with some pulled out of the atmosphere — so pretty much what was agreed to in Paris — we are still looking at about two degrees of warming,” Murdock said.   “For the 21st century it looks as if 2015 is our way to the new future.”

Last year, which saw near record streamflow highs and near record lows, was “an uncomfortable glimpse into the future,” agreed Faron Anslow, PCIC’s climate analysis and monitoring leader.   “Between May and June (2015) things really went off the rails in terms of the snowpack,” he said.   That meant high water flows in late spring and record-breaking low flows in the summer and the glimpse into the future shows wetter winters and hotter, drier summers, with inevitable effects on everything from fish and forests to agriculture and recreation.   “There’s more precipitation in the wet season and less in the dry season. The biggest factor is the change in timing,” said Sybil Seitzinger, Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions executive director.   That is bad news for fish, said Fisheries and Oceans Canada research scientist Kim Hyatt who has studied problems with warming waters resulting from the 2014-2016 strong El Niño and The Blob of warm water that developed in the Eastern Pacific in 2014.   “With those things back-to-back you can expect biological outcomes in spades,” he said.   The water, which was two-and-a-half to three degrees warmer than usual, brought a toxic algae bloom that extended from California to Alaska and caused the death of seabirds, fish and whales, Hyatt said.   Toxic algae blooms are not new, but they usually die off after a few weeks. The scope and duration of the 2015 bloom was unprecedented.

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The warm water brought in species such as trigger fish and butter fish, usually found in the waters off Hawaii, and those ecosystem changes are likely to continue this year, so more research is needed on interaction with native species, Hyatt said.   Salmon runs in B.C. did not collapse in 2015, but the fish were smaller than usual and the warm water in rivers had disastrous consequences for some runs such as the Columbia River.   Last year, 400,000 sockeye were counted at the mouth of the Columbia and, with 100,000 caught, 300,000 were making their way to the spawning grounds, but only 11,000 made it because of river temperatures that were elevated by two or three degrees.   “Ninety-seven per cent of the fish died en route,” Hyatt said.   “Two or three degrees doesn’t sound like much if you can air-condition your house, but fish can’t do that, so these fish expired,” he said.   “If 2015 is a harbinger of what we are going to see routinely, we are going to have serious problems maintaining salmon populations in the Columbia.”   Losses in the Fraser River were between 30 and 50 per cent because the more biologically diverse fish were better able to cope and that should provide a climate change adaptation lesson, Hyatt said.   “If we want fish in the future we are going to have to maintain biodiversity and look at fisheries systems that put demands on wild populations and make sure they are flexible and precautionary,” he said.   If people want to eat fish they must start relying more on aquaculture, Hyatt said.   “Marine populations are already at the ceiling of what they can support in the long run and, if you bring the ceiling down you are going to have to look at other ways,” he said.   Reduction of crop yields, increasing competition for water and wildfires are among the fallouts from drought, said Allen Dobb of the B.C. Agriculture and Food Climate Action Initiative.   Pests, diseases and pathogen patterns shift with warmer temperatures and, after the 2015 drought, salt water started coming further up the Fraser River and into irrigated areas, Dobb said.   “That is becoming a problem,” he said, pointing out that, in B.C., agricultural land is undervalued and underused.   “It is too easy to get produce somewhere else and I think that will have to change,” said Dob, who then skirted a question on the wisdom of flooding agricultural land to build the Site C dam.   “I can’t really respond to that dam situation,” he said diplomatically.   Drought will alter B.C.’s forests and species of trees planted, areas used for forestry and harvesting practices must change in order to adapt, Robbie Hember, a Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions research scientist, said.   British Columbians must expect more extreme weather events and there may be catastrophic mortality in some areas, Hember said, suggesting landscapes should be designed to be less vulnerable to wildfires.   “The timber supply will be more volatile and it’s going to be difficult to keep all the sawmills open all the time,” he said.   Anna Warwick Sears, executive director of the Okanagan Basin Water Board, watched the average snowpack suddenly melt away last year and, as the drought set in, she turned her mind to adaptation.   Her conclusion was that many solutions were basic common sense and she came up with a list of immediate actions for communities.   “Get the crap out of the water,” Warwick Sears said. “This is not rocket science, it’s manure and sewage and we know how to do this. With hotter, drier summers we’re going to grow more bacteria and algae and have a huge pollution problem. We’ve got to keep the water clean.”   Universal metering, expanded monitoring of streamflows and groundwater, local planning, a halt to lawn watering and going slow on new demands for water usage are among the actions suggested by Warwick Sears.   Then address obvious areas of difficulty, such as lack of communication between different levels of government and between governments and the public.   The number one piece of advice from Warwick Sears can be summed up with the word “collaboration.”   “Extreme weather events are going to cost more money and the only way we can get things done is to collaborate and get information from each other (on how to) adapt to climate change,” she said.   That may mean ditching preconceptions such as the necessity of preserving species in areas where they now exist.   In a world of imperfect solutions, resiliency is vital when addressing climate change, said Johanna Wolf, policy advisor with the Environment Ministry’s Climate Action Secretariat.   “Instead of focusing on species at risk, focus on the whole ecosystem. It’s a more resilient response.”

Image: BC Forest Fire Info via Facebook

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High in the trees that have been growing in the Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island for up to 1,000 years, unique colonies of insects and invertebrates are thriving.

Carpets of soil which develop in the massive branches of the old-growth trees contain a plethora of species not found anywhere else on Earth and, since 1995, University of Victoria entomologist Neville Winchester has climbed more than 2,000 trees to document and catalogue this life in the tree-tops.

“These ancient forests are a repository of biodiversity,” said Winchester, who has had more than a dozen beetle mites, aphids and flies named after him and who is giving a public talk this Friday at 6:30 p.m. at the University of Victoria.

Together with UVic graduate students, Winchester has conducted one of the most extensive canopy research projects in North America, using ropes to scale trees the equivalent of 18-storeys high in the Carmanah and Walbran valleys.

 “Then I take my mom’s bulb planter and take a sample of the suspended soils, which can be up to 60 centimetres in depth,” he said.

Despite overwhelming scientific evidence of unique ecosystems, Winchester is fighting a battle he thought had been won two decades ago when massive protests and demonstrations — part of the ‘War in the Woods’ that marked the 1980s and 1990s in B.C. — erupted over plans to log Carmanah Walbran.

At that time, Winchester was already doing canopy research and, when the government of the day responded to overwhelming public opposition and created the Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park, taking in 16,450 hectares of the old growth forest, he believed the war was over.

But now, part of the Central Walbran, just outside the park boundary, is under threat.

“I have the feeling that ‘here we go again.’ The same issues that were present then have surfaced again. They have been simmering for 20 years,” said Winchester, who finds it difficult to believe that politicians cannot look at the evidence and ban old-growth logging in the area.

“It’s greed, ignorance and arrogance. The scientific evidence is out there and it shows that these areas and these species are essential to protect biodiversity,” he said.

“By taking these trees down or by causing disruption you are committing species to go extinct. . . . Who would feel good about species going extinct just because we have mismanaged a resource? That’s the bottom line.”

Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) Photographer & Campaigner TJ Watt standing beside the Castle Giant in the unprotected Castle Grove.

The province has granted Surrey-based Teal Jones Group a permit for a 3.2-hectare cutblock east of Carmanah Walbran Park.

The cutblock is in the 500-hectare Central Walbran where, unlike the valley further south which is tattered with cutblocks, there is contiguous old-growth.

“It’s where our forests reach their most magnificent proportions,” said Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance.

“These are the classic giants. The biggest and the best — and some of the largest remaining tracts and finest old growth western red cedars are in areas such as Castle Grove, together with old-growth dependent species such as the Queen Charlotte goshawk and marbled murrelet,” Wu said, emphasizing the importance of these areas for tourism as well as biodiversity.

Jackie Korn stands beside a large redcedar stump cut by Teal-Jones in the Walbran Valley in 2014. Photo: TJ Watt.

Business leaders in Port Renfrew have called on the B.C. government to immediately ban logging in the unprotected part of the Walbran Valley, saying tall tree tourism is now a multi-million dollar business and the highest value would come from stopping further logging of old growth trees.

At the heart of the problem is the original configuration of the park, said Torrance Coste of the Wilderness Committee.

A large chunk, surrounded by park and known colloquially as “The Bite,” was left without protection.

“It was a big concession to logging interests. When the park was laid down, there was no consensus or agreement from the environmental side,” Coste said.

Logging has already degraded old-growth on the south side of Walbran Creek, and environmentalists are not happy about Teal Jones plans for seven more cutblocks in that area, but the line in the sand is the approved cutblock on the north side of the river, said Coste, who wants to see the 486-hectare northern section of The Bite protected.

Protests started in the area in November, but, three weeks later, a court injunction restricted access and stopped protesters from interfering with logging operations.

On January 4, in a B.C. Supreme Court ruling, the injunction was extended until the end of March.

Coste said that, although he and the Wilderness Committee are named in the injunction, the role of the group has been to record and advocate, not participate in blockades.

However, he believes the injunction is heavy-handed and designed to discourage people from going into the Walbran Valley.

There is a great need for eyes on the ground and for British Columbians to let the province know that it is not acceptable to log some of the last low-elevation old-growth on southern Vancouver Island, he said.

The Milky Way cradled by silhouettes of ancient redcedars in the Central Walbran Valley. Photo by TJ Watt.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations said in an e-mail that the ministry facilitated a meeting between the company and environmental groups in December to discuss how concerns could be addressed and another meeting is scheduled for next month.

The 3.2-hectare area that Teal Jones plans to log is part of a special resource management zone, which limits cutblock size to five hectares, and the company will use helicopter harvesting, meaning there will be no trails, roads or use of heavy equipment, the province said.

Conserving old growth and biodiversity are important parts of the province’s long-term resource management plans, said the spokesman.

“Of the 1.9 million hectares of Crown forest on Vancouver Island, 840,125 hectares are considered old growth, but only 313,000 hectares are available for timber harvesting,” the e-mail reponse read.

Coste remains hopeful that the province will have a change of heart.

“Nowhere else on Vancouver Island do we have the opportunity to protect such a large tract of contiguous old-growth,” he said.

“It’s an opportunity we absolutely can’t afford to miss.”

Winchester is hoping science will convince the government of the need for protection and he will publicly share findings from his years of research at a lecture Friday Jan.29, 6.30 p.m. at the University of Victoria Student Union Building Upper Lounge.

Admission is by donation with proceeds going to the Friends of Carmanah/Walbran campaign to protect the Central Walbran Ancient Forest.

Main Image: Looking up an ancient redcedar tree in proposed logging cutblock 4405. Central Walbran Ancient Forest. TJ Watt.

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The release of a University of Victoria study calling for updates to Canadian charitable law created quite a stir last week.

The study, prepared for DeSmog Canada, was covered by the Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times Colonist, Canadian Press, Macleans, The Tyee, Yahoo! News and CFAX.

The report called for the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to clarify rules around “political activities” — defined as any activity that seeks to change, oppose or retain laws or policies — and to provide a more generous limit on allowable policy advocacy in line with other common law jurisdictions such as Australia and New Zealand. It also called for the creation of a politically independent charities commission to remove the potential for political interference in audits.

The findings were raised in the House of Commons by Victoria NDP MP Murray Rankin, who stated the report “analyzes the alarming lack of clarity in the rules governing political activities for charities.”

Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, said the recommendations put “what’s going on in Canada in the context of what’s going on in other common law and western countries … It gives a sense of how far Canada is behind on these things.”

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Environmental Defence was one of 18 Canadian charities that called on the country’s politicians to enhance the ability for charities to engage in public policy debates earlier this month.

“The lack of a level playing field between business and citizens around public policy is particularly evident in the debate around climate and tar sands,” Gray told DeSmog Canada. “There’s massive spending going on by the oil sector to influence public policy and every dollar they spend on lobbyists in Ottawa or on television ads, they deduct from their gross income and therefore reduce the income tax that they pay to build roads and run hospitals.”[view:in_this_series=block_1]

Citizens who donate money to a charity only receive a 17 per cent tax benefit and charities are limited to spending 10 per cent of their resources on policy advocacy work, described as “political activity” by the CRA.

Fifity-two charities have been audited for their “political activities” under a $13.4 million audit program launched by the federal government in the 2012 budget.

“It’s already unfair and the rhetoric that’s out there right now is to say that that level of unfairness should be enhanced,” Gray said. “It would be a huge move to favouring involvement by corporations in public policy at the expense of citizens.”

Gray also said citizens are confused by the current talk around “political activities,” which many assume to mean “partisan activities,” which charities are banned from taking part in.

Bill Schaper, director of public policy and community engagement for Imagine Canada — which advocates for the charitable sector — said his group has been hearing more and more about re-thinking how we define charity over the last couple of years.

“It’s something that’s been percolating,” Schaper told DeSmog Canada.

But he also noted that there are risks associated with opening up charitable law for major changes. National Post columnist Andrew Coyne, for instance, has argued that we should get rid of charitable status altogether.

“As much as the grey zones are causing issues right now, sometimes grey zones are better than too much clarity because you might not like the clarity you get,” Schaper said.  

He noted that the charitable sector can do a better job of educating itself in terms of what constitutes “political activity” and said there would need to be much more discussion before Imagine Canada would push for specific changes to the law.

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A report released today by the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre calls for sweeping reform of Canadian charitable law in line with other jurisdictions such as the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and England.

Current rules around “political activity” — defined by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) as any activity that seeks to change, oppose or retain laws or policies — are confusing and create an “intolerable state of uncertainty,” the report says.

“This has created a confused and anxious charitable sector and detracts from them carrying out their important work,” Calvin Sandborn, legal director of the Environmental Law Centre, said.

The report — prepared for DeSmog Canada — comes as 52 charities are being targeted in a $13.4 million audit program launched by the federal government in 2012 to determine whether any are violating a rule that limits spending on political activities to 10 per cent of resources. Those charities include Environmental Defence, the David Suzuki Foundation, Canada Without Poverty, Ecology Action Centre and Equiterre.

Australia and New Zealand, also common law jurisdictions, have modernized their laws in recent years to allow charities to conduct more policy advocacy in carrying out their missions.

The report, Tax Audits of Environmental Groups: The Pressing Need for Law Reform, calls for Canada to establish clearer rules about what constitutes “political activity” and provide a more generous limit on allowable “political activity.”

Canada’s Charities Law Urgently Needs Update: New @ELC_UVic report http://t.co/EUj828Va94 #UpdateCharitiesLaw #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 25, 2015

“U.S. charity regulation is superior to current Canadian law because it is less vague and more respectful of the value that charities bring to public policy debates,” the report states.

Many European countries place no limit at all on a charity’s political activities.

Earlier this month, 18 Canadian charities called on the country’s politicians to enhance the ability for charities to engage in public policy debates.

“Our society has evolved and our legislation hasn’t,” said Eric Hebert Daly, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, a group that signed on to the letter.

The new University of Victoria report calls on Canada to modernize the definition of what qualifies as charitable to rectify instances such as the CRA’s ruling that Oxfam can not have a charitable goal of “prevention of poverty.”

“In modern society the law should recognize that a poverty-relief organization can often relieve poverty more effectively by lobbying for affordable housing laws than by operating a soup kitchen,” the report says.

In October 2014, the Broadbent Institute released a report, which raised questions about whether the recent audits have been targeted at charities critical of the Harper government. The report said several right-leaning charities are reporting zero “political” activity while engaging in work that appears to meet the CRA’s definition.

There is a direct structural chain of command from the Minister of National Revenue to the charities directorate (which audits charities), the University of Victoria report notes before calling for the removal of any potential for political interference by establishing a politically independent Charities Commission like the one in England and Wales.

“Regardless of whether the audits are targeted or not, an obvious way to address this issue would be to reform the law to eliminate the potential for political control over CRA audits,” the report reads.  “This has been done in other jurisdictions.”

“The perception that audits may be targeted at charities critical of government policies creates a chilling effect,” the report says — adding that with such vague rules, charities can end up spending an “inordinate amount of energy and resources protecting themselves from an audit.”

The report also notes the contrasting treatment of business and charities under the Income Tax Act:

Since businesses can deduct advertising expenses from their income, they can lobby the public through advertising without any imposed statutory restrictions. A recent example has been the omnipresence of the multimillion-dollar [Enbridge] Northern Gateway radio, television, internet and newspaper ad campaign favouring the project. All of these advertisements would presumably be tax deductible and therefore subsidized by general taxpayers.

In contrast to companies’ tax-deductible political advertising campaigns, charities must carefully ensure that all activities of a political nature are kept within the 10 per cent limit. This contrasting treatment of business and charities under the Income Tax Act has the effect of encouraging businesses to take political action in support of commercial and private interests — while hindering the counterbalancing efforts of charities working to protect public interests.

The report provides the example of cigarette companies fighting smoking laws to defend profits while cancer societies advocated smoking laws for the public good (to prevent cancer). The “political activities” of the cigarette companies would have been tax deductible, whereas the charities advocating tougher smoking laws would have had to follow the ten per cent rule.

“This impairment of charities’ pursuit of the public interest has been magnified by the recent spate of audits and their repercussions on the charitable sector,” the report says.

Policy advocacy by Canadian charities has resulted in measures addressing acid rain, regulations on smoking, laws against drunk driving and regulations on toxic chemicals.

Canadian charities and non-profit organizations account for more than eight per cent of Canada’s GDP. As of the end of 2013, there were more than 86,000 registered charities in Canada.

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Pressure is mounting on the University of Victoria Foundation’s board to rid itself of investments in fossil fuel related stocks, but, for now, the board is continuing to gather information and is sticking with the investing approach it fine-tuned last year.

Divestment supporters turned out in force Monday evening for a forum on climate change and divestment, organized by UVic and Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, with speakers ranging from Suncor Energy Inc. vice-president Steve Douglas to Malkolm Boothroyd, a spokesman for Divest UVic, and wild applause for those in favour of immediate divestment showed where the sympathies lay.

If it’s wrong to wreck the Earth’s climate, it is wrong to invest in fossil fuels, Boothroyd said.

“Responsibility means leaving those fossil fuels in the ground. We can’t have it both ways. UVic has got to make a decision and I believe it is UVic’s responsibility to divest from fossil fuels,” he said to a standing ovation from some of the audience.

For panel member Crystal Lameman of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation, the basic question comes down to taking any possible action, including divestment, to stop problems caused by “extreme resource extraction” in the Alberta oil sands.

“If you breathe the air and drink the water, this is about you,” she said.

But supporters of divestment already have it both ways as petroleum products are in everything from lipstick and Lycra to cell phones and paint said Douglas, emphasizing that divestment does not solve climate change. He argued 90 per cent of oil reserves on the planet are controlled by governments so reducing investments in the small percentage of private companies will not help.

The conundrum is that there is no doubt that climate change is real and burning fossil fuels is one of the culprits, but fossil fuels are essential to modern life, he said.

“How do you reconcile those two ideas?” he asked.

“How do we transition our energy system to meet the energy needs of the future in a climate challenged world? … We have to transition in a way that doesn’t dislocate our economy and our social system.”

Last year, UVic professors and other groups demanded that all new investment in companies whose primary interests are fossil fuel extraction, processing and transportation should be frozen and that the administration should initiate a three-year divestment plan.

However, the University of Victoria Foundation, which manages the $370-million endowment fund – used for scholarships, bursaries and research –  wrote to the university’s board of governors in September saying that it would maintain its current responsible investment policies that incorporate environmental, social and governance considerations. As part of the Foundation’s efforts to explore direct involvement in organizations that promote responsible investing, the board voted to become a signatory to the United Nations Principals for Responsible Investment.

Last September $39-million of the endowment fund, or about 10.5 per cent of its assets, were invested in energy sector stocks.

The lack of action is infuriating some of the UVic students, who were gathering names on a petition Monday evening.

“I don’t think the university students are going to stand for anything less than divestment,” said Ida Jorgenson.

“I think this is an issue that is not going to go away. In the end they are going to have to confront it.”

The divestment movement is taking root at universities throughout North America, with active campaigns at about 30 Canadian universities including Simon Fraser University and the University of B.C, where faculty is currently voting on whether to ask the board of governors to change its policy on responsible investment.

However, while some herald it as a positive step to address climate change, others believe it is misguided.

The moral high ground is in climate solutions, not in the drop in the bucket represented by university divestment, said Cary Krosinsky, a Yale University lecturer and co-founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative.

“If we are serious about (addressing climate change) we need a global initiative. We need a really big action. Divestment doesn’t even come close,” he said.

However, divestment does not necessarily mean a loss for the endowment fund and portfolios that have divested from fossil fuels performed well during the last year, he said.

But for panelist and Vancouver Sun columnist Stephen Hume, the issue is trying to address climate change in a polarized environment.

“Among the delusions is that there’s a them and us. There is no them, only us,” he said.

“This isn’t a theatre. It’s a canoe and we are all in that canoe and we had better start paddling in the same direction or we’re going to tip over and we are all going to drown,” he said.

That means the involvement of government, said Hume, exhorting students to get out and vote.

The theme was picked up by PICS executive director Thomas Pedersen, who challenged the audience to take action on climate change by voting.

“Make this an issue of key political importance in the federal election,” he said.

Image Credit: Daily Collegian via Flickr

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Official recognition that a Canadian species is in trouble is no guarantee that the slide towards extinction can be slowed or halted, a new study has found.

A paper by Raincoast Conservation Foundation scientist Caroline Fox and co-authors from the University of Victoria, published Monday by the scientific journal PLOS ONE, looks at species assessed by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) and concludes that, instead of recovering, many have become more endangered.

“Using the COSEWIC assessments, obviously we are not doing as well as we would like,” Fox said in an interview.

The study, Trends in Extinction Risk for Imperiled Species in Canada, aimed to assess the effectiveness of Canada’s biodiversity conservation and the report card is not good. 

Fox and her colleagues looked at 369 species and found that 115 had become more endangered, 202 were unchanged and 52 improved in status. Only 20, amounting to 5.4 per cent, improved to the extent that they were no longer at risk of extinction.

Species at risk of extinction or extirpation are initially reviewed by COSEWIC, an independent scientific panel that makes recommendations to government, and some species are then listed under the Species at Risk Act (SARA). Once a species is listed under the Species at Risk Act it has legal protection and, for most species, critical habitat is supposed to be identified and protected.

However, the study found that, in most cases, critical habitat was not fully identified. Of the 221 cases studied that required critical habitat protection, only 56 met the requirements.

“We suggest that the Canadian government should formally identify and protect critical habitat, as is required by existing legislation,” says the study.

“In addition, our finding that at-risk species in Canada rarely recover leads us to recommend that every effort be made to actively prevent species from becoming at-risk in the first place.”

Species at risk are protected by patchwork layers of legislation and the Species at Risk Act is the last resort, Fox said.

The study notes that recent weakening of federal laws that protect habitat, such as changes to the Fisheries Act, may result in more species heading for trouble.

“Future legislation should be underpinned by a strong mandate to conserve habitat and we recommend that any legislative changes that may reduce habitat protection (e.g. the Fisheries Act) should be reconsidered,” the report says.

Photo: Gregory Slobirdr Smith via Flickr

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The B.C. government’s claim that LNG exports offer the “greatest single step British Columbia can take to fight climate change” is inaccurate in the absence of stronger global climate policies according to a new report released today by the Pembina Institute and the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.

Natural gas does have a role to play in a world that avoids two degrees Celsius in global warming, but only if strong emissions reduction policies are put in place in the jurisdictions that produce and consume the gas, says the report, LNG and Climate Change: The Global Context authored by Matt Horne and Josha MacNab.

“Natural gas is often described as a bridge fuel. The question is, how long should that bridge be?” says MacNab, B.C. regional director for the Pembina Institute, a national non-profit focused on transitioning Canada to a clean energy future.

“Our research suggests it must be very short if we’re going to be able to get off the bridge in time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”

If strong climate policies were put in place to avoid reaching more than two degrees of warming, the burning of natural gas would peak by 2030 and drop below current levels by mid century, according to the report.

Under that scenario, energy efficiency, renewables and nuclear would increase significantly while the use of fossil fuels drops.

“It’s climate policy that will determine coal use, not the availability of natural gas,” MacNab says. “It’s not simply a question of LNG and coal swapping out for each other.”

The B.C. government’s claim, which was made during the February 2014 throne speech, is premised on two assumptions.

The first is that natural gas is cleaner than coal. On that point, MacNab said that in most cases natural gas is 10 to 40 per cent cleaner than coal assuming that methane is safely managed. However, the Pembina Institute report also notes that there “remains material uncertainty” about the life cycle emissions of natural gas that requires additional research.

The second assumption the B.C. government makes is that LNG will replace coal.

“In a world with weak climate policy, natural gas will not reduce coal use,” says Horne, B.C. associate regional director for the Pembina Institute. “Without a global push for low carbon energy sources and efficiency, LNG will likely worsen rather than ease global warming.”

The institute’s findings are in line with a report published last week in Nature, which found that cheap abundant natural gas will actually delay any efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

B.C. Needs to Put Emissions Reduction Policies Before LNG Strategy

To draw its conclusions, the Pembina Institute report compares the role of natural gas under two different scenarios: one in which global warming is limited to two degrees Celsius and one that stays on the business as usual path. The comparison yields two very different roles for natural gas — either as part of an energy mix that helps avoid dangerous climate change or as part of an energy mix that accelerates the world down the path to dangerous climate change.

“Instead of leading with LNG and natural gas strategies, jurisdictions — B.C. included — need to lead with emissions reduction policies,” the report says.

To avoid more than two degrees of warming and keep atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases below 450 parts per million, the International Energy Agency says policies need to include economy-wide carbon pricing, the phase out of fossil fuel subsidies, emissions standards on power plants and a renewable transportation fuel standard.

The Pembina Institute makes three recommendations to the B.C. government to increase the chances that B.C.’s LNG industry can be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem, including applying an evidence-based approach in assessing energy exports, strengthening domestic efforts to reduce emissions from natural gas and LNG development and playing a more proactive role on climate change and methane management globally.

If strong climate change policy was enacted on a global level, natural gas use would peak by 2030 — just 15 years from now. What does that mean in terms of B.C.’s plans to build an LNG industry?

“We would encourage the B.C. government to be thinking about that in terms of the long-term sustainability of the industry,” MacNab says. “B.C. ought to be careful in hitching its economic wagon to a resource that will decline in a carbon-constrained world."

Photo: Christy Clark at LNG Canada announcement via Province of British Columbia on Flickr

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