Negotiators at a global conference on saving the world's biodiversity were sharpening their focus on how to pay for it on Tuesday, December 13, 2022, as environment ministers from around the globe converged in Montreal for the final week of COP15.
More than 80 years after Ernest Callaway Manning warned "over-cutting" was "creating barren lands", the forestry industry has plundered the majority of the most valued old-growth forests in B.C.
As countries gather in Montreal to hammer out a new deal to protect global biodiversity, farms like the Coens' could offer a blueprint for how we produce food in the future. Agriculture is the largest driver of biodiversity loss worldwide, with farming identified by the United Nations as a threat to 86 per cent of species at risk of extinction.
Many key goals in a proposed agreement on protecting the planet's biodiversity remain unsettled as debate continues over who will pay for the ambitious pledges, delegates at a UN meeting in Montreal said on Monday, December 12, 2022.
On Monday, N.S. Environment and Climate Change Minister Timothy Halman said the province would put $20 million forward to protect land and water in the province and is designating 9,300 hectares of Crown land as protected. This will bring protected land in the province to 13 per cent.
Canada struggles with a legacy of colonial conservation policies that have disregarded Indigenous rights and sovereignty and damaged relationships with Indigenous communities.
Canada promises to restore 19 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2030 as international negotiations to save the world’s rapidly dwindling biodiversity carry on in Montreal.
Join us Thursday, Dec. 15 at 8 a.m. ET for a livestream conversation with EU Commissioner for the Environment Virginijus Sinkevičius and Canada’s Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.