Carney announces $3.8B to protect nature
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Prime Minister Mark Carney announced $3.8 billion in funding to protect nature on Tuesday, as the federal government moves to meet its conservation targets.
In addition to public funding, the government is looking for private sector investment to finance the conservation strategy, which will include the creation of new national parks and marine reserves.
“Building these venues is ambitious and requires significant funding,” Carney said during a news conference in Wakefield, Que. “We can’t do this with public money alone.”
The government aims to protect 30 percent of Canada’s lands and waters by 2030. About 14 percent of the land in Canada is currently protected.
Those protection targets were set by the Trudeau government following the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP15) in Montreal in 2022. In recent months environmental groups have expressed concerns that the government does not match its conservation ambitions with long-term funding commitments.
The new fund will be invested in three pillars, Carney said, identifying them as “protecting nature, building Canada well, and valuing nature and mobilizing capital.”
The government will immediately create two new conservation sites: the Winnipock Indigenous Protected Area and National Marine Conservation Area in Quebec’s eastern James Bay and the Seal River Watershed National Park in Manitoba, Carney said.
The government will also create “other effective area-based conservation measures”, Carney said, adding that “there are places where land and water can be conserved while allowing some other activities.”
14 new marine-protected and protected areas and 10 new marine conservation areas will be created. Two marine areas in the Arctic – Sarvarjuaq and Qikiqat – will protect populations of polar bears, walruses and beluga whales.
If created, these new protected marine areas would cover 12 per cent of Canadian waters, bringing the total amount of protected waters to 28 per cent.
“We have to work to close that gap and we will close that gap,” Carney said.
