A new Old-Growth Policy Update by the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance's executive director Ken Wu, filmed on February 10, 2023.
Currently, about 15% of the province is safeguarded in legislated protected areas, with ecosystems across the province at risk from a variety of industrial threats including commercial logging, suburban sprawl, oil and gas, mining, and agricultural conversion.
In BC the provincial government legally cannot unilaterally establish protected areas - First Nations support is a legal necessity for the establishment of protected areas on their unceded territories. Therefore, logging deferrals and the protection of old-growth forests in BC move at the speed of the will of local First Nations.
However, the BC government can and should ensure the enabling conditions - the policy framework and funding for sustainable economic alternatives to old-growth timber revenues and jobs in First Nations communities - in order to facilitate the ability of First Nations to viably choose protection options for old-growth forests and endangered ecosystems in their unceded territories.
Under Premier David Eby, the province has committed recently to:
- Expand protected areas from 15% to 30% by 2030 (ie. to double protected areas over 7 years)
- Devise a conservation financing mechanism (ie. funding for sustainable economic development linked to new protected areas) to support First Nations Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCA’s)
- Prioritize biodiverse areas for protection (which needs greater definition and policy development)
- Remove the constraints on conservation designations in BC’s forest practices regulations (the "not unduly restrict" clause that for decades limited the expansion of forest reserves) (announced Feb.15th...after this video was filmed)
- Develop a Biodiversity Declaration that will put biodiversity and ecosystems first in forestry and land-use decisions
- Support a transition to a lower volume, more value-added forest industry retooled to handle smaller diameter trees (instead of the forest giants).
- In addition, the province is negotiating a BC Nature Agreement with the federal government of major financial scale that will be used to expand protected areas.
These are all vital steps forward that are needed to help pave the path for a major protected areas expansion over the coming months and years!
However, missing still is the immediate funding needed to offset the lost revenues of First Nations in order to enable many communities to implement deferrals on logging of the most at-risk old-growth forests with high-value timber in their territories. The province must provide these funds immediately.
In addition, ecosystem-based targets set by science and informed by Traditional Ecological Knowledge are vital to ensure the prioritization of the most at-risk ecosystems for protection - otherwise protected areas will continue to be designated largely in alpine, subalpine, bog/muskeg and far northern landscapes with small trees or no trees, and minimized in the most endangered, productive old-growth forests with big trees and in valley-bottom ecosystems where most biodiversity and species at risk are found - and that are most coveted by industry.
Please continue to SPEAK UP! Your voice and that of hundreds of thousands of others have taken us this far - we are getting closer to a sea change to vastly expand the protection of endangered ecosystems for all in BC. Let's keep pushing!! Go to: www.endangeredecosystemsallia...
16 фев 2023
