Have we turned the corner on biodiversity protection?

In Robert Frost’s beautiful poem called ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ (Frost 1923), there is this immortal line: ‘the woods are lovely, dark and deep’. The poem conjures images of a verdant and healthy winter forest. But forests are not so healthy today, nor is the overall state of biodiversity in Canada and globally. The scientific community fully recognizes that we are now in the sixth major extinction of life on Earth. Climate change, industrialization, intense agriculture and our collective thirst for convenience and leisure have degraded the seen and unseen organisms and processes that nurture and sustain ecosystems. Perhaps the forbidding title of the famous book Silent Spring, written by Rachel Carson (1962), is becoming true. The diminished dawn chorus of spring bird song is just one piece of evidence that all is not right in the natural world. Indigenous peoples in Canada as well know this, and their explanation for the loss of biodiversity is eloquent. What sustains biodiversity on Turtle Island is a real genuine, respectful and intentional relationship between humans and all the living things. Species are going extinct because that relationship is broken and the plants and animals are going back to the spirit world. They will return once the plants and animals see that the relationship is functioning again. Poems, books, Indigenous peoples’ spirituality and our own experience of the natural world are telling us that life on Earth is in trouble.

We ignore this situation at our peril. Over half of the world’s gross domestic product is dependent on nature and its services. Many research institutions are showing that political unrest and global instability will result in many of the worlds’ countries due to the precipitous decline of ecosystem health in these respective states.

Canada is responding. In 2022, Canada hosted COP15, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, and played a key role in creating the Global Biodiversity Framework. This framework aims to safeguard at least 30% of the world’s land, fresh water, and oceans; halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030; and achieve full recovery for nature by 2050. Building on that at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, with his ministerial counterparts from other countries, announced the Government of Canada’s commitment to introduce a federal nature accountability bill in 2024. This is a significant step to reverse biodiversity decline in Canada. The bill is intended to establish an accountability framework for the federal government in fulfilling its nature and biodiversity commitments under the Global Biodiversity Framework. It would provide defined steps from now until 2030 to implement these commitments at the federal level, which would include requirements to develop Canada’s 2030 Biodiversity Strategy and report on its implementation. Clear and accessible reporting would enable progress to be assessed so that biodiversity protection targets and objectives could be met.

During COP28, Minister Guilbeault also announced other key commitments from the Government of Canada to support global biodiversity, including:

• modelling and examination of policy interactions among the triple crises of climate change, biodiversity, and pollution;

• that Germany, France, the European Commission, Norway, the United States, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Spain, Jamaica, the United Kingdom, Costa Rica, and Chad have joined the Nature Champions Network launched by Canada earlier this year to advocate for the rapid implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework goals;

• joining with the United States and Australia on a new initiative that will help decision makers account for the full value of nature when making plans and policies, called the Partnership of Cooperation on Natural Capital Accounting, Environmental-Economic Accounting, and Related Statistics.

These actions are certainly encouraging news. However, we cannot let the federal government be the sole impetus for actions and change. All levels of government and citizens have a role to play in protecting biodiversity. An excellent example of this is the dramatic pushback the Canadian provincial government got from citizens when it tried to remove lands from the protected Greenbelt so that developers could build houses. In the Fall of 2023, the Government of Ontario reversed this decision. Land currently protected in the Greenbelt will not be developed. Even at local levels, citizens are responding. The community of White Rock, outside of Vancouver, British Columbia, recently passed a by law that requires nature-based solutions to be used in all aspects of municipal park creation, maintenance and management.

Perhaps what we are witnessing is an example of harmonic convergence – that wondrous display of choreographed and immediate movement when a flock of birds or a school of fish all suddenly change direction in response to a perceived threat. Citizens and governments are responding to the biodiversity challenges. But we cannot let our guard down. The two most important things we can do to make positive change, according to biodiversity and climate change researchers, are (1) talk about these issues wherever and whenever we can and (2) vote in governments that will respond.

Carl Sagan once famously said: ‘Survival is the exception, extinction is the rule’ (2006). This is a sobering quote but it is becoming true for many species, due to the disregard and erosion of our relationship with them. Efforts are being made in all levels of society to bring biodiversity back – to rekindle that life-affirming relationship. Perhaps we will succeed and the woods again will be truly ‘lovely, dark and deep’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Croal

Peter Croal is a geologist who worked in the international development sector for over 30 years and is now doing pro bono consulting work for environmental institutions as well as managing the National Healing Forests Initiative that he co-founded in 2015.