Ontario’s Greenbelt

What greenbelts do 

Ontario’s Greenbelt
THE GREENBELT PLAN is a key component of the province’s growth management strategy for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, defining where development is off-limits. It takes a systems-based approach to planning, protecting more than individual natural features by incorporating the areas that surround, connect and support them. The Plan ensures that linkages between significant landforms – such as the Niagara Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine and the surrounding major watersheds and lakes – are protected, and includes speciality crop areas in Niagara and the Holland Marsh.

The Greenbelt makes significant contributions to the provincial economy. A 2012 study found that the total economic impact of the Greenbelt exceeds $9.1-billion annually, drawing revenue from the tourism, recreation, forestry and agricultural sectors. An additional $2.6-billion in benefits is provided annually by rich soil, forests and wetlands that filter our air, clean our water and protect us from floods.

The 10-year review of the Greenbelt Plan will take stock and identify ways to improve strategy, implementation and related policies. In light of changing global conditions such as climate change, water scarcity and food insecurity, the review will need to consider future challenges to ensure that the Greenbelt continues to help communities grow sustainably. 

– Kathy Macpherson, vice president of research and policy, Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation

Green Wedges, Melbourne, Australia
MELBOURNE HAS A 40-YEAR-OLD strategic plan to confine fringe metropolitan growth to linear corridors separated by “green wedges.” This plan showed that a city-wide strategy to incorporate urban hinterlands is essential to preventing the indiscriminate development of greenbelts by fragmented and competing local authorities. 

The city’s strategic plan was updated in 2002 to expand the green wedges into a true greenbelt, spanning 17 local councils. Local government introduced stronger rural zones and legislative protection for an urban growth boundary (UGB). This plan sought to divert up to 40 per cent of outer urban growth to the metropolitan area, reducing pressure on the wedges. Instead, a politicized planning process and the development industry’s power have since freed up 60,000 hectares by moving the UGB. 

The best protection for greenbelts is an inflexible UGB separating urban and rural uses, along with a metropolitan-wide, regional identification of land supply and urban densities. The future of Melbourne’s wedges is now threatened (and the impact of the UGB is undermined) by the proposed introduction of hotels, restaurants, resorts and other industry. 

Melbourne’s greenbelt provides many vital functions that make the city more resilient in a time of rapid change. Wedges are the second largest food-producers in the state of Victoria, and they provide crucial environmental services, including much of Melbourne’s water supplies, and important flora and fauna reserves. These services have a wide range of important economic values.

– Michael Buxton, professor of Environment and Planning, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Australia

São Paulo City Green Belt Biosphere Reserve, Brazil
SÃO PAULO links the major economic regions of Latin America into the world economy. Yet the city has long faced centrifugal urbanization, characterized by spatial segregation, pollution and poverty. For most of the 20th century, environmental degradation and an advancing city frontier had severe impacts on the ecosystem services that it depends on. After citizens opposed the Metropolitan Perimetral Road Project in 1989, UNESCO designated the city’s periphery as the São Paulo City Green Belt Biosphere Reserve. In 1993, it became part of the Mata Atlantica Biosphere Reserve. 

Biosphere reserves are tools for integrated land management that aim to conserve biodiversity, stimulate economic activity and offer logistical support for sustainable development. São Paulo’s was designed to embrace the metropolis and advance towards its centre. With challenges like fires, real estate speculation, infrastructure work and industrial sprawl, this protected natural belt joins large stretches of native forests, watersheds and coastal areas, agricultural lands and urban systems. It stabilizes ecosystem services, including the water supply, hillside and soil integrity, as well as the climate against the advancement of heat islands. Above all, it sustains São Paulo’s global economic role by providing a framework for managing the city and its conservation areas. 

– Karl-Heinz Gaudry Sada, research associate, Institute for Geo- and Environmental Sciences, and Institute for Socio-Environmental Sciences and Geography, University of Freiburg, Germany

Challenges to Ontario’s Greenbelt

Policy can fail some communities
THE ESTABLISHMENT of Ontario’s Greenbelt in 2005 – along with revisions to the Planning Act and Provincial Policy Statement, the Places to Grow legislation, and the plan and creation of Metrolinx – represented the most significant engagement in regional planning for the Greater Golden Horseshoe that the province has ever witnessed. However, the impact of these interventions on the sustainability of urban and rural communities in the region remains an open question. 

The Greenbelt protected a substantial swath of rural lands from urbanization and established critical connections between the Niagara Escarpment and Oak Ridges Moraine. At the same time, it permitted the large body of rural land already scheduled for development by municipalities to stand untouched. It left additional tracts, sufficient to support low-density urban development for decades, between its inner boundaries and the existing limits of planned development. Perhaps even more seriously, the Greenbelt’s limited northern boundaries left open the possibility of leapfrog development on its outer fringe. 

That scenario now seems to be playing out about an hour’s drive north of Toronto, particularly in southern Simcoe County, aided and abetted by the province’s recent Simcoe Sub-Area Amendment to the Places to Grow Act. The result, like so much of the McGuinty government’s environmental legacy, is a mixture of some dramatic steps forward, but also countervailing reaffirmations of commitments to relatively conventional (and unsustainable) development paths. 

– Mark S. Winfield, associate professor of Environmental Studies & chair of the Sustainable Energy Initiative, York University

Leapfrogging
THE PROBLEM of leapfrog development occurs when new subdivisions are built beyond the protected Greenbelt, chewing up farmland and forests with more sprawl, rather than in areas that are already urbanized, as intended.

Simcoe County is a prime example: the suburbs are going to explode around small towns, where there are few jobs, and where commute times to York Region and Toronto are long. New developments are mostly low density, making it less likely that people will have access to efficient public transit and more likely that they’ll drive into work each day, creating pressure for more highways through the Greenbelt.

While there’s no silver bullet, a good first step would be to make developers pay the full cost of their projects. Right now, taxpayers pay for the infrastructure to support sprawling, inefficient housing, such as water, sewer pipes and electricity. This makes it cheaper for developers to build low-density subdivisions by paving over farmland, rather than creating high-density housing in existing urban centres. We need to reverse this; developers should be rewarded for building liveable communities that use less energy and water, or pay the cost of their sprawl. 

The Ontario government also needs to get serious about holding municipalities to account for delivering on the goals of the Places to Grow Act by protecting natural heritage and directing higher density development into existing towns and cities. 

– Gillian McEachern, campaigns director, Environmental Defence

Landbanking
LANDBANKING involves the strategic purchase of huge tracts of land for future development. Landbankers such as Walton International have been paying much higher than market value for parcels of farmland around the Ontario and Ottawa greenbelts, then reselling ownership to mainly offshore investors. (Walton and its subsidiaries alone own about 5,260 hectares just outside the province’s greenbelts.) Landbankers typically gain enough influence over municipalities to rezone foodland for sprawl development, and to lobby provincial and municipal governments to build roads, sewers and water pipelines. The rezoned land becomes much more valuable and is resold at inflated prices, with the profits going to the offshore investors. 

The land buying process is often highly secretive. Heritage farms that have been cultivated for generations are sold off, dividing farming communities and often destroying relationships between neighbours and within farm families. While some farmers become instant millionaires, the landbankers’ strategy drives up adjacent land value and taxes, making it unaffordable for other farmers. Once heritage farmsteads are purchased, they are neglected by the landbankers and can become dilapidated “agrislums” that are eventually bulldozed, and those farming communities lose their critical mass. While many remaining residents become resigned, others work to stop the sprawl, including groups such as Sustainable Brant, Preserving Agricultural Lands Society and Tutela Heights Phelps Road Residents Association. 

How can we fix this problem? The first steps should be to protect all Ontario farmland with legislation similar to what the Greenbelt has, and lobby the provincial government to reinstate property taxes for non-residents. 

– Ella Haley, farmer, activist and assistant professor of Sociology at Athabasca University

Perceptions and barriers
GREENBELT 2.0 should focus on celebrating and enhancing the Greenbelt as it exists today. Expansion should not be the priority, beyond adding ravine systems or other natural features that already intersect with the Greenbelt. The priority should be to help Greater Golden Horseshoe residents and businesses understand the Greenbelt as much more than a barrier to development. It is a garden, a playground and a home for countless species, as well as a working landscape that is a source of livelihood for farmers, vintners, tour operators and other businesses.

The Greenbelt is vast and varied, but poorly understood. Most people’s interactions do not go beyond reading the road signs marking its boundaries across highways. Future initiatives should strive to make all aspects of the Greenbelt known to those of us who live in and near it. When the many millions of people whose lives are impacted by this swath of land understand that it allows us to have cleaner air and water, local food and access to natural spaces, its protection will not be tied solely to legislation that can change with the seasons.

– Leah Birnbaum, urban planning consultant

Greenbelts are socially and economically relevant – not just a pretty face. 

UNDENIABLY, the Ontario Greenbelt is beautiful. It has the craggy cliffs of the escarpment running from Niagara to the Bruce Peninsula, and the lush forest of the Oak Ridges Moraine moving eastwards. But the Greenbelt wasn’t created just to maintain a pristine environment; it also preserves a prime and productive landscape.

The Greenbelt is an internationally recognized economic powerhouse. Made up of 62 per cent productive agricultural lands and more than 7,000 farms, it is the heart of Ontario’s local food system, and forms a significant part of the second largest farming and food processing cluster in North America. The Greenbelt provides 161,000 direct and indirect jobs for a range of leading industries, including tourism and recreation. 

The Greenbelt is also crucial to Ontario’s growing communities. High-quality green spaces play an important role in building competitive cities and regions by increasing their liveability, which goes beyond the purely aesthetic value of being close to nature. Locals actively enjoy the landscape through activities like hiking, biking or snowshoeing. Communities like Ajax and Burlington regularly tout their balance between urban and rural as a selling feature.

Whether it’s fresh air, clean water, healthy local food or all three, what’s clear is that the world’s largest greenbelt is working for both our environment and our economy. 

– Burkhard Mausberg, CEO, Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation 

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Most people don’t exercise enough. According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, only seven per cent of Canadian kids get 60-plus minutes of moderate to vigorous activity every day, and about half of all men and women above age 12 are considered physically inactive.

“We spend billions of dollars on things like supplements or special diets, looking for that miracle cure all,” explains Dr. Michael Evans, a family physician and influential health educator and author (see also myfavouritemedicine.com/23-and-a-half-hours).

“We have a magic pill sitting right in front of us: activity. If we look at a wide range of problems that afflictour quality of life and our longevity – such as back pain, arthritis, depression, anxiety, heart disease, insomnia, type-2 diabetes or even cancer – activity can have a powerful treatment or preventive effect.”

A half-hour of exercise every day (or 150-plus minutes per week) can reduce the risk of many of these problems. For the millions of people who live in Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe, becoming active in the great outdoors is about as much commitment as an hour-long commute to work. The Greenbelt that surrounds the greater Toronto area boasts 1.8 million acres of countryside, about 7,000 farmers who produce everything from peaches to potatoes to poultry, and more than 10,000 kms of recreational trails.

Dr. Evans points out that any “green space” is inherently meant to be discovered, and that exploring Ontario’s Greenbelt can have three positive effects on wellbeing:

1. “The Greenbelt is made for walking, hiking and biking, activities that are demonstrably good for your health.”
2. “Emerging evidence suggests that being active in a beautiful ‘green’ environment might be better for you than being active in a plain ‘grey’ environment.”
3. “By definition, greenbelts are somewhat hidden, and the act of discovering gorgeous new scenery puts my woes and stress into perspective.”

With those benefits in mind, check out these fantastic opportunities to get active in the Greenbelt:  

• Great fishing, sandy beaches and 10 km of trails can be found year round at Valens Lake Conservation Area near Hamilton.
• Halton’s Mount Nemo features one of the Niagara Escarpment’s best cliff ecosystems, including crevice caves and ancient cedars.
• Find breathtaking views of the escarpment and Lake Ontario from the 10-km Lookout Trail in Grimsby’s Beamer Memorial Conservation Area.
• Hikers, cyclists and horseback riders can explore more than 250 km of beautiful forest and bucolic landscapes along the Oak Ridges Moraine.
• Old industrial mills and the throwback charm of the Village of Erin are threaded together by 15 km of serene walking trails.
• Northeast of Wiarton, the Bruce’s Caves Conservation Area boasts wooded swamps and rock formations carved by post-glacial waves up to 8,000 years ago.

The post The Greenbelt Prescription appeared first on A\J.

Since its creation in 2005, Ontario’s Greenbelt has become a renowned example of how to protect natural and rural environments in a rapidly urbanizing world. To foster the vitality of more than 725,000 hectares of green space (nearly 50 per cent of which is farmland) surrounding the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation financially supports projects that directly benefit the Greenbelt and surrounding areas. “Our role at the Foundation is to help the Greenbelt thrive as a flourishing countryside of productive farms and vibrant rural communities, a source of clean water and air, and pristine habitat for wildlife,” explains program director Shelley Petrie.

One of the not-for-profit organizations newest collaborations is with the Greenbelt Farmers’ Markets Network. Together they are making micro-grants available to individual farmers so they can develop new products and buy equipment such as hoop houses, dehydrators, pie ovens and bag stitchers. “Micro-grants are a great way to fund innovation with little financial risk to us or the farmer, who also puts in money,” explains Petrie. “This low-­risk scenario helps farm businesses innovate. It is also means as funders, we can assist a larger number of farm businesses.” In 2012, the Foundation donated $44,000 in micro-­grants to 68 farmers.

With their $1,000 grant, the farmers behind Bee’s Universe purchased a mobile trailer with a pump that enables them to bring their fresh specialty honeys (and other honey products) to eight farmers’ markets in the GTA. Their apiary is located within 90 kilometres of Toronto and Innisfil, Ontario.

P&H Organics used their grant to construct a hoop house (a semi-­circular tunnel made of polyethylene) to produce vegetables for year-round farmers’ markets. They also produce hazelnuts and a variety of fruits and herbs on their 80-­hectare farm, northeast of Port Hope, Ontario.

A micro-­grant helped Red Pocket Farm to cover a portion of the cost for a row cover, which protects against flea beetles. The small buisness, located in Toronto’s Downsview Park, produces a selection of Chinese vegetables that are typically hard to find at farmer’s markets and conventional supermarkets. Their bounty includes bok choy, gai lan, choy sum, edamame beans, napa cabbage, eggplants, yard long beans and chrysanthemum greens.

“Food and farming are some of the leading contributors to our local economy, with a $35-­billion annual impact,” says Petrie. “Investing in farmers contributes to a thriving industry and related jobs and revenues for rural communities.

”By creating new market opportunities, micro-­grant recipients such as Bee’s Universe, P&H Organics and Red Pocket Farm can expand their presence in their local food systems. Their contributions to increasing product diversity at farmers’ markets also helps to attract more consumers. “Farmers’ markets are the choice for shoppers wanting to buy local food,” says Petrie. “Micro-­grants can play a role in strengthening the 100-­plus market destinations around the Greenbelt.”

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DURING THE 1970S, Kenya began to suffer from increasingly evident ecological decline. Streams were disappearing, watersheds were drying up and the Sahara Desert was encroaching from the north.

DURING THE 1970S, Kenya began to suffer from increasingly evident ecological decline. Streams were disappearing, watersheds were drying up and the Sahara Desert was encroaching from the north. To counter the land’s diminishing vitality and promote a better path forward, professor Wangari Maathai of the University of Nairobi founded the Green Belt Movement (GBM), a community-based organization that used tree planting to revitalize the soil, protect watersheds, provide fuel and improve nutrition for those most in need.

The GBM’s protection agenda would come into conflict with the regime of Kenya’s then-president Daniel arap Moi during the 1980s and 90s. Maathai was brutally beaten by police and Moi’s supporters, and she often lived in hiding. Yet the GBM continued to fight for legitimacy and human rights. In 2004, Maathai became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle for democracy, human rights and environmental conservation.

Wangari Maathai lost her battle with cancer in September 2011. While the loss was tragic, her legacy lives on through the work of the GBM, for which her daughter, Wanjira, is now director of international affairs. In recent years the GBM has shifted its focus to landscape-level initiatives, using improved geographic information systems (GIS) technologies and accounting strategies from the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism to offset greenhouse gases.

I had the honour of meeting Wanjira Maathai at the 4th International Conference on Drylands, Deserts & Desertification, hosted by Ben-Gurion University of Israel. As we sat on a bench in the heart of Israel’s Negev Desert, Maathai talked about her mother’s legacy and the future of the GBM, which now has 450 volunteers and 4,000 community tree nursery groups, and has planted more than 51 million trees (so far) in Kenya. 

 

What we do is agitate, we write letters, we publicize, we engage the media so that we shine the light on injustices that are going on.

Kyrke Gaudreau: Israel is a country that has devoted great effort towards making the desert bloom. How can Israel’s efforts serve as inspiration for the GBM? 

Wanjira Maathai: There are a lot of things in Israel that are of great inspiration. Kenya, my country, is considered to be two-thirds semi-arid, or desert, so we have a third of the country that produces all the food, and from which all the water essentially comes. We have five forested mountains for all our water, and right now those mountains have less than two per cent forest cover. So the priority to restore those degraded forest areas is so high and of such a critical nature. 

To come to a country like Israel, so relatively dry when compared to Kenya, and to see the conscious efforts to restore degraded areas to produce food for its population – and then to project years ahead what will happen and how to mitigate, to research and apply technologies that are literally pushing the borders – is extremely inspirational. We in Kenya are so lucky to have what we have. If we were to compare rainfall patterns, I think we would be shocked by how little precipitation falls in Israel and therefore how incredible it is that people still have potable drinking water from the taps. In Kenya, we cannot drink water from the taps – it’s largely considered unsafe to drink. 

There are a lot of lessons just for our own psychological challenge. Surely we can do better. Last night I reflected on the fact that my mother always said to us, “We can all dig a hole and plant a tree, we have no excuse not to be able to produce enough food for everybody to eat.” We have 10 metres of topsoil in most places, two metres at least, yet we buy oranges from Israel. Can you imagine that? We can’t produce our own and yet we have so much potential. 

KG: Your mother inspired people with powerful imagery, such as the story of the hummingbird. Why are such strong symbols so important for mobilizing people? 

WM: Human beings are moved by metaphors, stories and powerful images. I think the hummingbird, for example, is a story that my mother told a lot in closing her speeches. She always was asked, “So what can we do?” Yesterday you had the same question being asked after professor [Paul] Ehrlich’s speech. Now that you have dumped us in the hole and depressed us – what can we do? 

Often my mother would tell the story of the hummingbird, which is an extremely small bird in your hemisphere, and that is perhaps the hardest-working bird on the planet. It flaps those wings and is able to do so much with its little body and its little beak. And my mother would tell the story of a fire in the forest, and all the animals and birds flew out and ran out, and stood on the side, watching the fire go up in flames.

She would tell how this little hummingbird decided to do something about this raging fire. It decided to take a drop of water from the river to the fire, and it kept going back and forth, always bringing a drop of water and hoping that each drop would make a difference. All the others were discouraging and saying “that’s too much,” and “the fire is too big for you, you should just stop, give up.” And it said “I’m not going to give up, because I’m doing the best I can.” And my mother would say “I hope it is the same for you, that you would do the best you can.” 

The metaphor of being the hummingbird became the thing that we do. We hope that people would be hummingbirds in their communities – doing whatever the best they can, wherever they are. If you go to the Green Belt Movement website [greenbeltmovement.org] you will find a wonderful hummingbird video there. And do watch it, because it’s my mother narrating it and you see this animation of a hummingbird, doing what I’m saying. It is very powerful. 

Tree planting is central to what we do as well. It’s also symbolic. The tree is a symbol of a commitment to action, a commitment to do something to transform communities. Wherever we had issues of conflict, trees were planted and we called them peace trees. In Kenya there are certain trees that are considered peace trees, because they were used, traditionally, in peacemaking ceremonies. 

Hummingbird Heroics 

A HUMMINGBIRD’S BRAIN is 4.2 per cent of its body weight (the largest proportion in the bird kingdom), and its metabolism is roughly 100 times that of an elephant. Hummingbirds can fly about 40 to 50 km per hour on average, and can reach speeds of more than 90 km per hour when diving. They can also see a broader colour spectrum of flowers than other pollinators. 

After witnessing an eight-year-old Grevillea robusta tree being cut down by locals in Nairobi last summer, a seven-year-old student at Peponi Prep named Leo was so disturbed that he contacted Wanjira Maathai. “I would like to plant some trees, maybe you can help us,” wrote Leo. GBM responded immediately to Leo’s request, arranging an event that resulted in 130 trees being planted and environmental activities becoming part of the school’s curriculum. Maathai fondly called Leo a hummingbird during the ceremony.

KG: The GBM began with a first tree, and now more than 51 million have been planted. Among all those trees, do you have a favourite? 

WM: I love most of the trees that we plant. But some of the trees, like the fig trees, are beautiful because they have such enormous canopies. They grow into these magnificent trees that cross centuries. Some fig trees are 300 or 400 years old. They are still standing and they are magnificent. What is said about these trees is that, not only are they beautiful with their canopies, but they have roots that penetrate deep into the ground, and then into the groundwater, allowing springs to come up. Many times where fig trees are found, you also find springs. 

KG: One of the frameworks that emerged from the Rio+20 summit in June 2012 was Zero-Net Land Degradation (ZNLD), which is part of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). How does the GBM fit into these broader international frameworks? 

WM: A lot of people think desertification means the advancement of the desert, but it really doesn’t. It means that you have productive land that is converting into having the characteristics of a desert. These are lands that are eroding. For us in the Green Belt Movement, one of the biggest challenges we have is to ensure that soils are kept covered and protected to prevent land degradation. 

The UNCCD is central to what we do. We are trying to encourage people to understand – and get the children to really understand – that rivers are supposed to be clear, they’re not supposed to be brown. If they are brown, there’s erosion, there’s silting, and it’s going to affect the life in the river, but also their ability to have potable water and hydropower. 

Kenya is largely a green energy producer. Our electricity comes mainly from hydropower. The grid in Kenya is considered pretty green – hydroelectricity and geothermal. It’s still not enough, so we have a lot of power cuts and rationing. But if we took care of our forested mountains and had healthy clean rivers, we would probably have enough electricity, as turbines would be humming at full capacity. 

KG: Your mother fought for what she believed in, oftentimes at great personal risk. If necessary, will the GBM continue to be disobedient in the fight for a better world? 

WM: It’s interesting that you use the word disobedience, because we have an advocacy program. Advocacy is extremely effective. We’ve always had what we call actions, to bring and agitate for change. So I would say agitation rather than disobedience, because one of the things that the Green Belt Movement has offered as a policy is that we never break the law. We always conduct our actions within the law. 

When we’re going to have an action to protest the building of a structure in a wetland, for example, we inform the authorities as is required by law – we write a letter or take it to the police station and tell them we’ll be doing this and we need their protection. Sometimes they agree to protect us, sometimes they don’t. But they can’t refuse us to meet. We never engage in stone throwing or things like that because we do not think that’s effective. What we do is agitate, we write letters, we publicize, we engage the media so that we shine the light on injustices that are going on. My hope is that we continue to do that. 

WTF are ZNLD and UNCCD? 

THE UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION is a global partnership established in 1994 to reverse, prevent and mitigate the impacts of land degradation, drought and soil infertility. The UNCCD is the only legally binding international agreement that links environment and development with sustainable land management, and in doing so recognizes the profound interrelationships between water, food and energy security. Many factors – population growth and urbanization, increased food demands and bioenergy production, climate variability and drought – are creating greater urgency, and the UNCCD’s response mechanism is Zero-Net Land Degradation. The goal is to achieve global ZNLD in 2030 by preventing activities that degrade landscapes and offsetting damage with restoration projects, which will require all nations to collaborate. While the concept is commendable, it also leads to more questions: How do we quantify land degradation and restoration to account for local contexts, and how do we decide which country’s actions make up for counteractions elsewhere?

KG: What gives you hope that your children will live in the type of world that you and your mother and countless others have fought for? What do you tell them about how to live their lives? 

WM: The truth is that nothing is the same when you have children. Life becomes that much more introspective. You’re right in saying the work becomes that much more urgent. Listening to Paul [Ehrlich] yesterday using expressions like “slitting your grandchildren’s throat” when you do certain activities – it really is startling, but it helps bring the message home. 

We have to be extremely committed. I’m aware that the challenges are much more than one person can handle. But if I can do my part, and everybody does their part, maybe we’ll be all right. I really believe that we have to continue to keep the pressure on. 

We’ve seen changes. My mother’s work in the early years was considered treasonable in Kenya. She was in jail for speaking up for the environment. Today, we have a new constitution in my country that has coded environmental rights into it. Things are happening, things are changing, so I have a lot of hope, obviously. I know that I learned what I learned, and I have the values that I have, because I had a mother who lived this. She was an optimist. I hope those same values will be imparted to my children. 

What kind of people will they be? The truth of the matter is I hope they will be good people; people that are compassionate and caring; people who care about others and who will give to others and remember they are privileged to be born in a time when they have pretty much everything they need.

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“Hi, I’m an environmentalist striving to save the boreal forest, and I would like to sell you some wood.” It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but this counter-intuitive pitch, which turns environmentalist into salesperson, is the logical – and necessary – outcome if the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA) is to flourish, says leading forestry-policy expert Ben Cashore.

In many ways, the incongruity of that vision epitomizes the CBFA’s strength. After all, the process that created it was rife with oddities. It was forged by a union between environmentalists and forest-products companies, with the former promising to stop “do not buy” campaigns and the latter pledging to suspend logging on nearly 29 million hectares of forest, much of it prime caribou habitat.

As a result, the agreement quickly came under suspicion from people on both sides of the forest-use debate. The fact that it was agreed upon behind closed doors, and with little input from First Nations groups, didn’t help. But now, just over halfway through the three-year agreement, the CBFA stands out as a highly innovative and unique approach to a thorny problem. “[The CBFA] is laudable for trying to maintain this ecosystem in a collaborative way. It’s a model for other areas,” Cashore says, his voice pressing, but lively over the phone.

“The CBFA’s main strength is taking a management position towards the forest, as opposed to a conservation position. This agreement thinks about the long-term needs of other interests: the idea of where to preserve for conservation and where you can extract. That isn’t to say it’s perfect. We shouldn’t let this agreement downplay some people’s desire to protect the whole forest. [But] if you want to use the forest, it’s innovative.”

Even though Cashore is a professor of environmental governance and political science at Yale University, and serves as the director of that university’s Governance, Environment and Markets Initiative as well as its Program on Forest Policy and Governance, the expat Canadian is wary of being called an expert. In his line of work, he says, there is just a group of people trying to grapple with constant change.

And forestry is a field divided along many lines: conservation versus management, public versus private ownership, government versus industry regulation. All of these concerns coalesce in the CBFA, which covers 72 million hectares of forest from British Columbia to Newfoundland and Labrador.

On the conservation side, the boreal is one of the three largest intact forests in the world, but there has been strong debate recently among forestry scientists about whether it’s particularly important. The boreal is much less biodiverse than tropical forests. One part of the boreal is much like any other, whereas the tropical forest in Borneo is vastly different from that in Sumatra. Although Cashore doesn’t share the idea, some forestry scientists argue that because the boreal doesn’t hold as much  biological value, it should be logged instead of tropical and temperate forests.

“Wanting to save the forest by itself is enough,” he says. “There are very few forests of its size that have not been touched. The forest is important as a forest.”

Regarding the public-versus-private-regulation debate, the CBFA was only possible, and successful, due to Canada’s public forest ownership. “Many people argue that the way to protect forests is to privatize forestry. Our research shows this is not the case. The highest regulations governing environmental forest practices are found on government-owned land, regardless of country,” Cashore says. “Government has more capacity to require things on the lands it leases to corporations.… The firms would not do this if it was privately held.”

But for Cashore, regulation is the biggest issue because the self-regulating Canadian Standards Association certified the agreement instead of the independent and international Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

“Industry might have a great program, but they’ll never be trusted to regulate themselves,” Cashore says. “I would have expected, and preferred as a citizen, that this agreement would have had FSC certification. If the agreement had FSC, it would have been an extraordinarily innovative response. By not having that, they missed an opportunity.”

While the process could have been better, and its certification would be stronger if it were at arm’s length, Cashore believes the CBFA stands as an excellent example of what can be achieved through collaboration, the genesis of which began 25 years ago in the great environmental battles at Clayoquot Sound and elsewhere. The polarization of those battles has softened in the years since, says Cashore, as each side learned to respect and understand the roles of industry, government and NGOs. “It’s a union, and that’s really important.”

For the CBFA to stand the test of time, Cashore says the same groups will have to not only learn each other’s roles, but trade them. “If you do that, the NGOs have to sell wood to maintain conservation, and the firms have to maintain conservation to sell wood. By switching the roles, you get durability,” Cashore says. “This is the missing ingredient. If you do that, the agreement will never die.”  

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IMAGINE a solar-powered machine that filters water, moderates air temperature and regulates the climate. Some would call it an amazing feat of engineering genius. Most people call it a tree.

Humans have a history of overlooking the many ways by which nature supports us. In North America, pollinators are responsible for one in every three mouthfuls of food, yet we are allowing habitat decline and pesticide use to devastate their numbers. Ten per cent of the world’s fish catch comes from coral reefs, yet overfishing, pollution and sedimentation have destroyed or degraded one-third of these underwater gardens.

When it comes to sustaining biodiversity, our track record is not very good.

By 2010, the International Year of Biological Diversity, we were to have seen a significant reduction in global rates of bio- diversity loss. This target was adopted in 2002 by the signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). But there has been little progress, and CBD officials concede that “most of the direct drivers of biodiversity loss are projected to remain constant or to increase in the near future.”

A substantial barrier to progress has been pervasive ignorance of our economic, social and biophysical dependence on biodiversity. If there is any light on the biodiversity horizon, it is that now people seem to better understand that biodiversity is crucial to our well-being.

More often than not, biodiversity is considered to be a matter of protecting endangered species, especially polar bears, whooping cranes and other media darlings. This is how diversity is treated in the best-known monitoring programs and in most species-at-risk legislation. In contrast, modern science and the CBD recognize three aspects of biodiversity: diversity among species; genetic variations within individuals and populations; and ecosystem diversity, which includes the ways organisms interact with each other and the non-living world around them.

Each aspect of biodiversity facilitates the functioning of an ecosystem. In Canada’s boreal forest, for example, species diversity builds resilience to disease and invasive plants. Genetic variation gives forest species the capacity to adapt to changing environmental conditions. These, in turn, combine with the cumulative interactions of forest plants, animals, air and soil to produce the air we breathe, filter the water we drink and absorb the carbon we produce in order to mitigate the impacts of global warming. If the boreal forest is to continue providing these essential “ecosystem services,” it requires diversity of species, genetics and ecosystems.

Diverse, natural forests are especially good at delivering ecosystem services. But while a tree plantation may produce timber, paper, biofuel and other commodities, its marginal biodiversity limits disease resistance, soil production and, ultimately, its ability to sustain production over the long term.

Shahid Naeem, professor of Ecology at Columbia University, studies the role of biodiversity in ecosystem functioning. “The greater the biodiversity one finds in forests, farms, fisheries, parks and even urban ecosystems,” says Naeem, “the more services they will provide and the more resilient they will be to environmental challenges such as global warming, fires and floods.” In other words, he adds, “the more diverse our world, the more productive and stable it will be.”

This understanding of biodiversity is the central idea behind the CBD. Ratified by 193 countries at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the CBD aimed not just at species preservation, but also at biodiversity protection for the survival of all life, and the adoption of more sustainable approaches to resource management and use.

Unfortunately, drafting the accord was the easy part. “In reality, international environmental instruments all tend to be non-binding,” explains Eleanor Sterling, director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History. “Policy at the national level will tend to relegate environmental issues to a lower priority, due to a perceived independence of environmental issues from other pressing policy areas such as health and economic development.”

To clarify how crucial biodiversity is for human well-being, a team of over 1300 leading natural and social scientists compiled the planet-wide 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. The findings highlighted the accelerating rate at which humans are appropriating the planet to provide livelihoods and economic goods. Much of what is left over is made up of open oceans, deserts and ice caps. Few intact ecosystems remain to provide necessary provisioning services, such as soil formation, climate stability and recreation.

As the 2010 targets slide by, small victories are vastly out-weighed by decline. Shrinking populations and rising extinction risks are indicative of deeper losses of ecosystem functions, driven by increases in land conversions, consumption levels and indirect pressures including climate change. 
 

How Diversity Allows the Boreal Forest to Provide Ecosystem Services

Optimal ecosystem function requires that all facets of biodiversity are healthy and in balance. In this example, having diversity among species builds resilience. Genetic variation within species helps them adapt to changing conditions. Also, the ways organisms interact with each other and the non-living world around them provide ecosystem services that are essential to life and worth billions when measured in dollars. For instance, wetlands store vast amounts of carbon in the underlying peat; carbon is also sequestered by trees during photosynthesis; and water is purified as it percolates through the water table. The quality of life for all animals, humans included, is diminished when biodiversity is compromised. 

There is good news, however. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment emphasized that biodiversity is the foundation for ecosystem services, and stressed that ecosystem services are, in turn, critical to the sustainable production of goods and life-support systems. It encouraged valuing the environment as a service provider. The result is a proliferation of new strategies for conservation that are attracting the attention of businesses, non-environmental government agencies and other groups not traditionally associated with conservation.

Some initiatives treat ecosystem valuation as a basis for generating incentives for conservation. Among the many “payment for ecosystem services” schemes, perhaps the best recognized are carbon markets. The idea is that if a nation or company exceeds a set CO2 limit, emissions can be offset by paying a landowner elsewhere in the world to maintain a forest and thus the carbon it sequesters.

Ecosystem valuation illustrates the importance of ecological infrastructure even if money does not change hands. In 1997, Nature published a landmark scientific paper entitled, “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital.” It estimated the global value of the world’s ecosystems to be roughly twice that of the global GDP. While deriving such an estimate involves using some debatable assumptions, the message is simple: ecosystem values are enormous and if environmental costs (and benefits) were included in the price of commercial goods and services, land-use and consumption decisions would be quite different.

Ontario’s Greenbelt Plan acknowledges that maintenance of quality of life and health for the most densely populated part of the country depends on preserving ecological services. Wetlands, watersheds and farmlands, the very things destroyed by urban sprawl, prevent floods, cleanse water and contribute to local agriculture. It’s estimated that Southern Ontario’s greenbelt provides upwards of $2.3-billion per year in ecological services, and this should influence decisions to convert the landscape into housing, commercial and industrial lands, and transportation corridors.

As the greenbelt example suggests, it is important to consider the cost to replace ecological services caused by land-use changes. However, ecological valuation raises concerns related to the practicality and ethics of monetizing nature. Undervaluation of ecosystem services and the degree to which nature can be subjected to market forces are both matters of debate. Consequently, many research projects do not assign an explicit monetary value. The aim is to provide more complete information for people who make resource management decisions and to improve the tools they use in analyzing their options.

Kai Chan at the University of British Columbia coordinates research into ways that economic activities affect coastal water-sheds, and their ecological impacts affect the economy. Chan’s British Columbia Coastal Ecosystem Services Project tracks multiple activities – from mining and pulp and paper, to fisheries and recreational uses – and pays attention to complex interac- tions between socio-economic and ecological effects.

“By considering where activities occur and how their impacts may influence or reinforce one another,” Chan explains, “we can learn where development is more appropriate, or target the most critical ecosystem services to conserve and restore. It is a complex picture, but one that can ultimately improve coastal management.”

As one of an increasing number of researchers who are addressing ecology-economy connections, Chan is optimistic. But he acknowledges that changing the way we manage natural resources is not easy. “Governmental capacity to operate across agencies is likely limiting progress more than a lack of tools or data to address these issues,” he says.

Eleanor Sterling sees people at the centre of efforts to protect biodiversity. “We talk about institutions and government as if they are not in essence driven by everyday decisions of people,” she says. “But they are, and therefore conscious decisions that take into account principles of adaptive management and system-wide thinking are critical to our healthy future.”

Across Canada, individuals and agencies are beginning to embrace the concept of ecosystem services. Collectively, we must remind leaders that nature is an asset we cannot afford to take for granted. 

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