There is nothing to brag about. While COP15 is in full swing in Montreal, and we are hoping for a global biodiversity protection agreement that will not be too thin, we learn that Canada is alongside Brazil and Russia on the list of countries that have cut the most unique biodiversity of their forests due to the industrial exploitation of these environments. A performance that we have nothing to brag about.
The duty reported this week that the American organization National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) gave the worst marks to this trio of dunces. Canada comes in third, after Brazil (shameless destroyer of the Amazonian forest) and Russia (the Russian forest represents a fifth of the world’s forest, but precious hectares are sacrificed there for the benefit of the extraction of gas, oil and gold as well as logging).
It is no coincidence that these bad students alone held, in 2020, 65% of the forest area still intact on the planet, with spectacular wealth of biodiversity observed in both boreal and tropical territory.
Alas, three times alas! As if this vast territory gave them the impression that they had more to waste, the three accomplices are the ones who have reduced the untouched forest area the most between 2000 and 2020. Forests are nevertheless major agents in the fight against climate change. climate change, and the degradation of these major forest densities directly attacks the principle of carbon capture emitted by humans — in fact twice as much in Canadian boreal forests as in tropical forests.
Once again, the planet loses out.
This type of call to order contrasts sharply with the image of an exemplary player that Canada prides itself on having as the host country of this United Nations conference. When it comes to protecting the environment — and here, more particularly, biodiversity — the waltz of superlatives sometimes takes precedence over the reality on the ground. While experts and scientists cry out for the loss of the Earth, politicians parade promises and millions, showing only the bright side of their balance sheets.
On the Quebec side, the protection of forests against the appetite of the industry would by default help to save the woodland caribou, about which Quebec and Ottawa are still negotiating the terms of an agreement which must become a reality by next June. . At the microphone of All one morning, at Radio-Canada, the Minister of the Environment of Canada, Steven Guilbeault, could not say this week that he was completely satisfied with the state of these negotiations. The two governments have engaged in a veritable showdown over the fate of the woodland caribou, several herds of which in Quebec are suffering significant declines and whose total population is now only a few thousand individuals.
By announcing this week a biodiversity protection plan on which, in all honesty, we must not spit, Quebec had a great opportunity to include priority measures to safeguard the woodland caribou. What the Minister of the Environment Benoit Charette did not do, to everyone’s surprise.
The federal government classifies the animal as an endangered species, while Quebec maintains it as a “vulnerable” species, which reduces the urgency to act. The Quebec government will not be able to procrastinate much longer, however, because the framework agreement it signed with Ottawa last August provides for additional measures that will increase the threshold for protecting caribou habitat in Quebec—it is currently 35%, but it must increase to 65%. This agreement came about just after the publication of the report by the Independent Commission on Woodland and Mountain Caribou, which clearly underlined the “urgent need to act” to protect endangered species. In particular, it proposes measures to protect large tracts of mature forests.
The Innu, who have urged Ottawa and Quebec to step up the pace in this file, must also participate in the negotiations in the coming months. Moreover, Friday at COP15 was an important day for indigenous peoples from all over the world, who came to proclaim the importance of protecting their territories, but also the need to include them in the discussions – which is, indeed, absolutely capital. In Quebec, the decline of the woodland caribou, threatened by logging, is weakening the Innu culture, in which the animal plays a central sacred role.
Beyond the official parades, Canada, like Quebec, takes the opportunity to act swiftly by protecting their forests from attempts at exploitation. The game is seriously worth the candle.