The biodiversity crisis is not just the disappearance of polar bears and bees. It is also about the human species that it is a question. Without bees to pollinate our crops, it’s hard to say what our plate will be like in about thirty years. Despite these alarming findings, events like COP15 show how complex international mechanisms are and struggle to respond to the crisis.
Without disempowering national governments, part of the solutions can be found at the municipal level. The UN has shed light on the main causes of the biodiversity crisis through the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Here are three solutions that Quebec local municipalities should implement now.
Protect natural environments against urban sprawl. In southern Quebec, the surface occupied by urbanized areas is currently increasing at an alarming rate of 0.6% per year. According to the IPBES, the change in land and sea use on a global scale is the element that has had the most harmful impact on nature since 1970. Local municipalities hold several levers to better protect their natural environments. Urban densification can represent part of the solution, but let’s keep in mind that it maintains a logic of growth which is at the very origin of the problem.
Local municipalities must put in place measures to limit and optimize the consumption of space in the city. They must preserve and rehabilitate existing underutilized buildings — think of our precious crumbling churches or the office buildings emptied by teleworking. They must put in place policies to reduce the place of the automobile in favor of active and collective mobility. In some cities, the road network and parking lots occupy nearly 30% of the space. These large asphalt surfaces should be reclassified as local green spaces for the benefit of biodiversity, but also of communities.
Develop a local production and purchasing policy.World trade has increased tenfold in the past 50 years. This creates an ever greater distance between the places of production and consumption. The transport of goods over long distances then contributes to climate change, which is one of the main causes of the decline in biodiversity. This remoteness not only prevents us from controlling production environmentally, but also ethically.
Local municipalities must join forces on a regional basis and adopt ambitious local production and consumption policies. This is the approach taken by the Bas-Saint-Laurent region by integrating the international FabCity movement to achieve 50% autonomy in the agricultural, manufacturing and energy sectors by 2054.
Incorporate eco-taxation as an alternative to property tax. Our economy almost strictly promotes its growth without considering the damage caused to the environment. This represents another of the main causes of biodiversity decline according to the IPBES. Ecofiscality makes it possible to systemically integrate the protection of living organisms into the economy. It also represents an effective alternative to the property tax, which today pushes cities to grow constantly.
However, local municipalities still make too little use of this power (which they have had since 2017) to protect the environment. In 2018, Quebec’s eco-fiscal levies were estimated at 1.4% of GDP, while the average for OECD countries was 2.3% of GDP, rising to 3.7% for Denmark. The principles of ecofiscality could in particular be applied to the benefit of the solutions mentioned above. For example, to reduce the spatial footprint of the automobile, Montreal will tax outdoor parking lots for non-residential buildings larger than 20,000 square meters starting in 2023.
The solutions described require audacity, both on the part of civil servants and elected officials. To this end, let us pay attention to the Summit of subnational governments and cities, which will take place on December 11 and 12 on the sidelines of COP15. As citizens, we must also have the courage to vote for the candidate who proposes measures that will change our habits.
That said, let’s remember that a world where we consume less is also a world that allows more time for entertainment, socializing and personal development. It is said that a change in habit takes 21 days to be integrated. The human species took 4.2 billion years to evolve into its current form. To refuse to set in motion the necessary changes is to put our lives at risk, including those of our children.