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editorial

The Trudeau government’s signature environmental policy is in a rut, its mantra of building pipelines in exchange for taxing carbon having hit two major snags.

First, even though Ottawa now owns it, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion faces an uphill battle against an entrenched opposition in British Columbia. Second, Ontario just elected a premier who vows to fight the federal government over its carbon-pricing regime, adding a powerful voice to a chorus of provincial politicians of the same ilk.

Basically, the Trudeau government has managed to alienate environmentalists with its pipeline advocacy and anger conservative voters with its carbon-tax plan. At this rate, Canada will fall short of its Paris Agreement emissions target and might still not be able to get Alberta crude to tidewater.

Fortunately for a government in need of a green win, the Liberals are staring down another deadline that they are in a better position to meet, and that faces no organized opposition.

That is, Canada’s international commitment to set aside 17 per cent of our land and freshwater for conservation by 2020.

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives agreed to the target in 2010, along with more than 150 countries, but did little to meet it. The Liberals haven’t been much better. In the past decade, Canada’s proportion of protected land has barely inched up, to 10.5 per cent from 9 per cent.

That puts us lower than many other developed countries, including the United States, where about 13 per cent of the country is protected from development. Germany is at almost 40 per cent.

The Liberals seem to be taking the target seriously, however. In this year’s budget, they set aside $1.3-billion over five years for conservation, and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna has been meeting with the provinces about getting to 17 per cent.

Increasing our stock of protected areas would have more than just symbolic value. It would bring tangible benefits, too, such as protecting populations of pollinating insects that are key to the agricultural sector, and preserving boreal forests that can serve as flood and drought protections at home, and as carbon sinks for the world.

That’s on top of the tourism dollars and enjoyment that public parks afford. Conserving land doesn’t have to mean walling it off from people. It can mean more lakes and rivers for future generations to paddle on, more forests to hike in and more meadows for picnicking.

Conveniently, governments can make this happen with relative ease. About 90 per cent of Canada’s land is in public hands, managed by the federal government, Indigenous groups and, above all, the provinces and territories. Many provinces already have huge unfulfilled conservation promises, such as the 225,000 square kilometres of northern boreal forest Ontario vowed to protect in 2008, just 13,000 of which have been set aside so far.

Sure, making an additional 6.5 per cent of the country off-limits to industrial and extractive development in two years will take some doing.

There’s an up-front cost – buying out logging and mineral rights, paying for land-use planning for hundreds of thousands of square kilometres – and the continuing cost to the stewardship of these areas.

Choosing the right land also takes time and money. It would be cheating to draw a line around some large, remote part of Canada and say “mission accomplished.” The idea is to preserve biodiversity; governments need to set aside a wide range of land and water, encompassing, say, the habitats of polar bears and indigo buntings alike.

Still, challenges notwithstanding, this ought to be a no-brainer. While fighting climate change is hard and divisive, requiring serious trade-offs, this is something we can do for the planet at relatively little cost and with broad public support – ecological groups find the issue polls extremely well.

Plus, unlike the longer-term threat of global warming, conservation is physical and immediate. Everyone can understand clean rivers and healthy forests. They conjure images, as with those found in Auden’s The Fall of Rome, that we should all wish to keep alive:

“Altogether elsewhere, vast/ Herds of reindeer move across/ Miles and miles of golden moss,/ Silently and very fast.”

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