Canada's wilderness, one of the last great frontiers of biodiversity, is home to unique species found nowhere else on Earth. A new report warns that the ongoing global decline in biodiversity poses serious risks to food security, water, health and climate stability — as decision making around the world increasingly favours economic gains at dangerous costs.
From the wetlands of Ontario to the coastal rainforests of British Columbia, these pristine ecosystems are vital not only to the country but to the planet's ecological health.
Canada is home to an estimated 80,000 species, 24 percent of the world’s boreal forests and about 25 percent of the planet’s temperate forests. Canada also has the world’s longest coastline, more than 2 million lakes, the third-largest glacier-area globally, and its rivers contribute seven percent of the world’s renewable water supply—an essential resource for life across the globe. We have one-fifth of the world’s surface freshwater.
Closer to home, Ontario spans more than one million square kilometers of land and water, offering a breathtaking diversity of ecosystems and natural beauty.
The province hosts the world’s largest protected area— the Greenbelt—and shelters more than 30,000 known species, over 250,000 lakes, and 500,000 kilometers of streams. These waterways wind through four distinct ecozones, from the Arctic tundra in the north to the lush Carolinian forests in the south, making the province a true living mosaic of life.
Ontario’s Carolinian forests, the smallest forest region in Canada, make up just one percent of the country's landmass. Despite their size, they support the highest number of native tree species and host around 25 percent of Canada’s at-risk species, including the Acadian flycatcher and cucumber tree.
These forests play a crucial role in maintaining biodiversity, providing essential habitats for species like the boreal woodland caribou, one of Canada’s most iconic animals. Unfortunately, the caribou population continues to decline with only 15 of the 51 caribou ranges by 2017 having the required undisturbed habitat to support long-term survival.
The situation has worsened with 2023’s unprecedented wildfires, which burned an area approximately 15 times larger than the annual average over the past decade.
Despite Canada's rich natural heritage, troubling trends in biodiversity are becoming increasingly apparent across the country.
The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada has identified 841 species at risk and 21 of those are extinct or ‘extirpated.’
A key driver of these challenges is the rapid loss of intact forests, with Canada ranking third globally in this regard. This is becoming an increasingly pressing problem in Ontario where the PC government, since 2018, has pursued a growth-at-all-costs agenda, with little consideration for the environmental impacts. Its Highway 413 plan threatens to decimate critical watersheds; it refuses to study the cumulative impact to Ontario’s biodiversity caused by this aggressive push for development—labelled as ‘ecological insanity’— and crucial laws put in place to protect species at risk and vital ecosystems like wetlands have been gutted by Premier Doug Ford.
A recent report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), also called the Nexus report, reveals that global biodiversity has declined by two to six percent per decade over the past 30 to 50 years.
The report attributes this ongoing decline to an intensification of “direct drivers” such as land and sea-use changes, pollution, climate change, overexploitation of resources and invasive species, which are fueled by "a wide range of indirect drivers," including shifts in economic, demographic, cultural, and technological patterns.
When these two drivers interact, they cause “cascading impacts among the nexus elements.”
Climate change and biodiversity loss “interact and compound each other to negatively impact ecosystem resilience and all the other nexus elements.”
If current “business as usual” trends in direct and indirect drivers of change continue, the outcomes will be extremely poor for biodiversity, water quality and human health – with worsening climate change and increasing challenges to meet global policy goals.
This is especially concerning since over half of global GDP—more than $50 trillion of annual economic activity—is moderately to highly dependent on nature.
“But current decision-making has prioritized short-term financial returns while ignoring costs to nature, and failed to hold actors to account for negative economic pressures on the natural world,” co-chair of the IPBES report Professor Pamela McElwee said in a statement. “It is estimated that the unaccounted-for costs of current approaches to economic activity – reflecting impacts on biodiversity, water, health and climate change, including from food production – are at least $10-25 trillion per year.”
Experts also argue that industrial activities such as mining, logging, and road construction are key factors contributing to the degradation of these critical habitats. But this has not stopped the PC government in Ontario from prioritizing new road projects which will have enormous consequences for the province’s biodiversity and valuable natural spaces.
The federal government includes blanding’s turtle, redside race, western chorus frog, Jefferson salamander, red-headed woodpecker, bank swallow, bobolink, chimney swift and wood thrush in its species at-risk list.
These are just a few of the many species facing jeopardy due to Ontario Premier Doug Ford's relentless push for Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass.
Despite knowledge of this impact, and repeated calls from environmental experts and advocacy groups, the federal government has ignored these warnings and refused a federal impact assessment for Highway 413.
The federal government’s recent update to its greenhouse gas emissions reduction target—from 40-45 percent by 2030 to 45-50 percent below 2005 levels by 2035—has been met with concern by environmental groups.
The David Suzuki Foundation calls the target "inadequate," emphasizing that as the G7’s largest per capita polluter and the fourth-largest oil producer in the world, Canada needs to make much more significant reductions.
“The fossil fuel industry’s pollution and political influence in Canada remain the biggest obstacles to meeting any climate target, as industry continues to have a chokehold on climate policy. We need federal and provincial governments to work together to counter the deception, disinformation and science denialism of the fossil fuel sector to secure a livable future for communities throughout Canada,” Sabaa Khan, Climate Director and Director-General of Quebec and Atlantic Canada at the David Suzuki Foundation, said.
As previously reported by The Pointer, 28 members of Canada’s delegation at the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (COP 29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, had direct ties to the fossil fuel industry and were granted Party badges by Canadian governments.
Canada was also nearly two weeks late in announcing its new emissions targets. Meanwhile, most G7 countries are yet to release new emissions targets.
Delayed action on climate change adds at least $500 billion per year in additional costs for meeting policy targets globally, the IPBES report warns. “Weak environmental regulation, made worse by delays, results in worsening impacts for biodiversity, food, human health and climate change.”
In Ontario, as the Ford government persists in weakening environmental protections and pushing a "build at any cost" agenda, environmental organizations are intensifying their efforts, urging the provincial government to strengthen its commitment to safeguarding Ontario’s natural heritage.
On December 16, Ontario Nature, Nature Canada and 58 of their partner organizations wrote an open letter to Acting Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks Todd J. McCarthy and Minister of Natural Resources Graydon Smith requesting that the Government of Ontario commit to protecting and restoring nature.
“Biodiversity loss and climate change are international crises that require effective cooperation between all levels of government,” Ontario Nature said in a statement.
“Provincial governments ultimately play an equal role as the federal government, especially since 87 percent of Ontario’s land mass is provincial Crown Land.”
The letter points to the 2030 Nature Strategy released by the federal government in June, a key step in addressing biodiversity loss and fulfilling Canada’s international commitments.
While Ontario has participated in recent federal-provincial-territorial meetings on nature, it has yet to implement a coordinated plan. Ontario’s provincial Biodiversity Strategy includes similar goals to those in the national strategy but lacks a clear implementation framework.
“To date, the governments of Ontario and Canada have signed a $10 million agreement over three years to support the expansion of protected areas in Ontario. This agreement does not commit Ontario to the national and international targets and is a disappointing investment to meet the challenge of biodiversity loss,” Ontario Nature points out in a statement.
In contrast, other provinces are moving ahead.
In November 2023, the governments of Canada, British Columbia, and the First Nations Leadership Council signed a tripartite framework agreement on nature conservation, committing to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. Quebec also released its 2030 Nature Plan earlier this year.
However, the IPBES report contends that environmental, social and economic crises – such as biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, health risks and climate change – are all interconnected, and “fragmented governance” between these elements is putting all of those systems at risk.
Focusing on maximizing outcomes for just one part of the nexus in isolation is likely to lead to negative consequences for the other interconnected elements.
“For instance, we could maximize food production, which we’ve been focusing on, but that has negative impacts through biodiversity loss, unsustainable water usage, reduced food diversity and quality, poor health and pollution,” Taylor Ricketts, one of the authors of the IPBES report and Professor and Director, Gund Institute, University of Vermont, told The Pointer in an interview.
Rather than continuing this approach, the IPBES report offers 71 potential solutions, including two sustainable scenarios for countries to consider.
The first model, the "nature-oriented nexus," emphasizes expanding and improving protected areas, particularly in regions with high biodiversity. This strategy requires "deliberate efforts to address existing and emerging injustices and inequality" while increasing Indigenous involvement in decision making.
This model also advocates for a transformation of global food systems, including the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices, reducing food waste, exploring alternative food sources, and promoting healthier, more sustainable diets.
Shifting to sustainable healthy diets and reducing food waste would “benefit food security and health” and “reduce greenhouse gas emissions” and could also “free up land, providing in a range of cases co-benefits for nexus elements, such as biodiversity conservation and carbon sinks.”
A 2023 Government of Canada report showed ten percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions came from crop and livestock production.
Experts have, however, identified cattle as the leading agricultural source of greenhouse gases globally. On average, a single cow releases about 220 pounds of methane annually through belching. Although methane has a shorter atmospheric lifespan than carbon dioxide, it is 28 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
A 2021 study found that the production of cows, pigs, and other livestock for food, along with their feed, is responsible for nearly 60 percent of emissions from global food production. Beef production alone accounts for a quarter of the emissions.
In Brampton, a recent motion, introduced by Councillors Navjit Kaur Brar and Gurpartap Singh Toor, made the city the first in Ontario to endorse the Plant Based Treaty, recognizing the environmental impact of the food industry.
A shift towards a sustainable economic approach has the capability to generate more than $10 trillion in business opportunity value while supporting 395 million jobs globally by 2030, as per the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment.
The second model, the “balanced nexus,” focuses more on stringent environmental regulations and less reliance on technological solutions compared to the nature-oriented model, and prioritizes the restoration and sustainable use of natural resources. While it has fewer positive impacts on biodiversity, water, and climate than the first model, it has a slightly more favorable impact on food systems and human health.
“Maximising all nexus elements simultaneously is unlikely to be possible, but achieving balance across policy goals will likely lead to beneficial outcomes for nature and people,” the report notes.
However, “there's a role for everyone. So, governments, communities, Indigenous groups, businesses, nonprofits, anybody who eats or buys anything, all those groups and people have roles,” Ricketts said. “And in fact, they all need to collaborate for this to succeed.”