Grasslands store tons of carbon — and there’s a movement to protect them | 24CA News

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This week:

• Grasslands retailer tons of carbon — and there is a motion to guard them
• We’re nearing 1.5 C of warming. What does it signify?
• As Canadians name for greener pensions, stress mounts for funds to chop ties with oil and gasoline

Grasslands retailer tons of carbon — and there is a motion to guard them

Saskatchewan’s wild prairie is roofed in a thick blanket of snow proper now, however beneath it lies a storehouse of life. 

Billions of tonnes of carbon are saved beneath Canadian grasslands, they usually’re a essential device within the wrestle to keep up a wholesome local weather. 

“Some people have likened them to upside-down tropical forests,” mentioned Candace Savage (photograph above), a Saskatchewan-based creator and advocate for grassland safety. Like historical forests, native grasslands are constructed up over centuries, however as an alternative of locking carbon in bushes, grasslands maintain them contained in the soil. 

But native grasslands are among the many world’s most endangered ecosystems. In North America, a couple of million hectares are destroyed every year for cropland and concrete areas. 

“We’re slowly losing these places where we reflect and we are with the land,” mentioned Kevin Wesaquate, a multidisciplinary artist from the Piapot First Nation, about 50 kilometres north of Regina. 

Wesequate and Savage are members of the Swale Watchers, a group group working to guard a grassland space referred to as Northeast Swale on the outskirts of Saskatoon. This month, town council voted to extend the realm spared from encroaching improvement. The announcement was a welcome signal for Wesaquate, however hardly the tip of the wrestle. 

“It’s almost like I’m stepping into a bit of a time machine when I take a walk out into the swale,” he mentioned. “We have come together to protect these sites.”

According to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, greater than 70 per cent of Canada’s native grasslands have been misplaced; in Saskatchewan, it is round 80 per cent. Not solely that, however in Saskatchewan and Alberta, solely about one per cent of what stays is protected.

Luckily, the motion to guard it has realized some issues. For millennia, First Nations throughout the Prairies stewarded the grasslands they lived on, utilizing managed burns and grazing bison to maintain grassland ecosystems in steadiness. Now, organizations like Parks Canada are integrating that strategy, together with communities and their livelihoods in grassland safety. 

It’s been a years-long course of.

“It took 15 to 20 years for us to figure each other out,” mentioned Miles Anderson, a third-generation rancher who has lived subsequent door to one of many continent’s largest protected grassland areas, Grassland National Park, which extends throughout nearly 1,000 sq. kilometres in southern Saskatchewan.

When Grasslands National Park was created within the Eighties, Anderson says ranchers like him had been required to maintain their livestock out of the park boundaries. Over the years, this exclusion dealt a blow to endangered species just like the higher sage grouse. 

“The population just crashed,” mentioned Anderson, because the grouse chicks could not discover sufficient meals within the lengthy, dense, ungrazed grasses. 

Done proper, grazing might help quite a lot of plant varieties to coexist. And animal manure can maintain these crops wholesome by fertilizing the soil. That’s good, as a result of completely different grassland species just like the higher sage grouse depend on several types of plant ecosystems. 

Until about 200 years in the past, wild bison had been prime grassland grazers, and a essential animal for First Nations throughout the Prairies. Their populations have since been devastated. There are applications geared toward restoring bison herds, together with a current challenge led by the Key First Nation in southern Saskatchewan, however cow grazing may assist fill the hole. 

Anderson says that led to a relationship with Parks Canada: his cows can graze throughout the park boundaries, and the park will get the biodiversity profit. 

Anderson says figuring out how a lot to graze requires talent and a few trial and error. It additionally takes numerous land — which has turn out to be costlier in Saskatchewan and throughout the prairie. Crop cultivation, in the meantime, tends to herald extra revenue, nevertheless it requires tearing up the carbon-rich earth that grasslands retailer, releasing a lot of that carbon into the setting. 

Today, Anderson advocates for applications to help ranchers to steward the grasslands they work on. 

In an emailed assertion, the Province of Saskatchewan highlighted the area’s Prairie Resilience local weather change technique and its Climate Resilience Measurement Framework, which goals to extend protected areas from 9.8 per cent to 12 per cent by 2025.

Environment and Climate Change Canada commented that it has invested greater than $5 billion in nature-based local weather options, together with grasslands, and highlighted its Nature Smart Climate Solutions Fund, which features a deal with securing unprotected grasslands.

Candace Savage says the current win to guard the swale in Saskatoon could also be magnitudes smaller than the landmass of Grasslands National Park, nevertheless it supplies a possibility for native communities to get acquainted with the marvel of grasslands and to advocate for his or her safety. 

In her years of writing concerning the Prairie landscapes, she’s seen a shift in that path.

“One of the things that has changed is more reverence for grasslands. More appreciation of them, more protection for them, more restoration,” she mentioned.

“They’re patient places,” she mentioned. “They remind us that the choices that we make today are going to have impacts over decades and generations.”

— Zoë Yunker, with information from Leisha Grebinski

Reader suggestions

In response to Rohit Joseph’s piece final week on winter biking, Kenneth Kepler wrote:

“I did a lot of winter biking between 2011 and 2016. Salt was the problem. I used studded tires and coaster brakes, no problem. But the bike frames and fenders rusted quickly. One older bicycle I used (and liked) one day literally broke in two on my way home at night — rusted right through.”

Fabien Sicart:

“Despite my work location being quite far (45 kms) from where I live (downtown Hamilton), I use a ‘refurbished’ bike for most of my in-town commute, when possible. I have a front-mounted baby seat and a trailer for the kids. 

Hamilton has been improving its bike lane infrastructure quite a lot in the last few years with proper separated bike lanes. The biggest problem in the winter is that when they plow, either they forget the bike lane or they push the snow ONTO the bike lane to clear the roads, making the bike lane not usable. To be fair, I noticed that this winter, bike lanes are starting to be cleared by a specific snowplow, so things are improving!”

Old problems with What on Earth? are proper right here. 

24CA News has a devoted local weather web page, which might be discovered right here.

Also, try our radio present and podcast. Just days in the past, the world heard one other warning from the United Nations on the necessity to act urgently to maintain the planet beneath 1.5 C of warming. This week, What On Earth hears concerning the many options specified by this new report, and the way it can act as a “survival guide” as world governments take motion on local weather. What On Earth airs on Sundays at 11 a.m. ET, 11:30 a.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app or hear it on demand at CBC Listen.

***And watch the CBC video collection Planet Wonder that includes our colleague Johanna Wagstaffe right here. 

The Big Picture: Nearing the 1.5 C warming threshold

Earlier this week, the UN’s local weather panel launched a synthesis report that claims the planet is prone to attain 1.5 C of warming (since preindustrial occasions) within the “near term” — possible “sometime in the 2030s,” in line with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Keeping warming beneath 1.5 C was one of many goals of the Paris Agreement, however given the present price of fossil gasoline use, it’s turning into more and more unlikely that we can keep away from it.

Right now, the planet is estimated to have warmed between 1.1 C and 1.3. C, and the results are already clear, from extra lethal wildfires and flooding to droughts. Every report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) paints an more and more dire image of life on Earth within the coming century, however succumbing to defeatism isn’t an choice, says Katharine Hayhoe, world chief scientist for conservation group Nature United. “Every bit of warming matters. And if we give up, we are doomed,” she mentioned.

The newest report is unequivocal about what human society must do: scale back carbon emissions at lightning velocity. But it additionally demonstrates the methods wherein collective motion has labored. Before the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016, the world was on monitor to succeed in 3.5 C of warming by 2100. Since that historic accord, nonetheless, we’re on monitor to succeed in 2.5 C. With introduced pledges from international locations, it could possibly be restricted to 1.7 C. And if we attain internet zero by 2050, it may restrict warming to 1.5 C. 

The subtext is straightforward: co-operation works. We simply have to increase and expedite our efforts.

Hot and bothered: Provocative concepts from across the net

• Australians could possibly be the primary individuals on the planet to confidently compost their worn-out clothes after the nation’s requirements group accepted technical specs for compostable textiles, proposed by a lingerie entrepreneur.

• A brand new information centre beneath building in Lévis, Que., will present waste warmth to greenhouses to develop meals. Two Canadian researchers take a more in-depth look in The Conversation, displaying that whereas such tasks have advantages, they are not a transparent win for agriculture or the setting.

As Canadians name for greener pensions, stress mounts for funds to chop ties with oil and gasoline

Despite mounting stress from Canadians who need their cash to cease supporting oil and gasoline, nearly all of the nation’s largest pension fund managers proceed to put money into that sector — and are led by people with shut ties to fossil gasoline corporations.

24CA News reviewed publicly out there bios and resumés of leaders overseeing Canada’s 10 largest pension funds and located that eight organizations have at the least one high-ranking member — both a board member or an government — who’s actively directing an organization within the oil and gasoline sector. 

Those corporations embody oil and gasoline manufacturing corporations, pipeline operators, gasoline retailers and drilling rig contractors. 

Current legal guidelines and rules don’t bar administrators from holding roles at pension funds and firms within the oil and gasoline sector, mentioned Barnali Choudhury, a company governance knowledgeable and a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto. 

But Choudhury understands why it would elevate questions for some. She inspired members with issues to contact their pensions boards to advocate for stronger local weather motion. 24CA News spoke with a number of individuals who have been doing precisely that.

Teri Burgess, who teaches Grade 4 in Comox Valley, on Vancouver Island, mentioned youngsters at this time are rising up beneath the shadow of a altering local weather, and the concept a part of her paycheque could contribute to that’s past irritating.

“It’s ridiculous to think that [pension directors] can serve the needs of their members as well as sit on another board,” mentioned Burgess, who has two sons.

This previous week, Burgess attended her union’s annual basic assembly, the place members handed a movement calling on the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation to develop a plan for his or her pension’s full divestment from fossil fuels by 2028.

Her pension fund is managed by the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI). According to a 2022 funding stock replace on BCI’s web site, the lecturers’ fund supervisor holds shares in a variety of oil and gasoline corporations, together with ConocoPhillips, the corporate behind the controversial Willow oil drilling challenge in Alaska.

“I don’t know any colleague of mine in any school who wants to stand at the front of the room and say, ‘Hey kids … I’m going to continue to invest in something that I know is harming you,'” mentioned Burgess.

BCI’s government vice-president and world head of infrastructure and renewable sources, Lincoln Webb, can also be the chair of the supervisory board of pure gasoline transmission community Open Grid Europe and a board member of Czech Gas Networks.

Neither Webb nor BCI’s media relations workforce responded to CBC’s a number of makes an attempt to get in contact for remark.

BCI has acknowledged in earlier statements that “climate change poses a systemic risk to the value of our clients’ portfolios and to the global economy” and mentioned it supported “the global path of net zero.”

It’s one instance of how, regardless of various levels of local weather dedication and net-zero insurance policies from eight of Canada’s largest pension fund managers, there proceed to be overlaps between the oil and gasoline trade and people funds, which signify about $1.96 trillion in internet property.

“It seems to me … impossible to serve both the interests of a major fossil fuel company on the one hand, and the interests of the pension fund and its beneficiaries on the other hand,” mentioned retired economist Roy Culpeper, who lives in Ottawa and used to work within the federal Department of Finance.

While day-to-day funding choices usually are not typically made by board members, they do usually set technique and approve overarching funding insurance policies. 

CBC reached out to the eight pension organizations examined for this piece. None of them agreed to an interview. Three responded with written statements.

A spokesperson for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board mentioned through e-mail that “it does not make sense to suggest there is a conflict of interest because a director has experience in one specific area.” 

The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) highlighted that as of June of final 12 months, it had divested from 90 per cent of its oil manufacturing property. A spokesperson for Alberta pension fund supervisor AIMCo mentioned “board members are not selected on the basis of their particular sectoral experience, but rather the complement of skills and acumen that they bring.”

Sustainable finance group Shift Action tracks the local weather commitments of Canada’s largest pensions and just lately graded their sustainability in a report card. 

Patrick Derochie, senior supervisor for Shift Action, mentioned whereas some funds are displaying indicators of progress via net-zero targets and extra funding in renewable vitality, “Canada is behind on this issue.”

The New York state pension fund and Europe’s greatest pension fund (APB) have each made the choice to drop fossil gasoline shares. In Canada, CDPQ is the one one in every of Canada’s largest pension funds that has dedicated to excluding oil producers from their portfolio, however not gasoline.

Derochie wonders whether or not administrators who’re on the boards of fossil gasoline corporations are attempting to advance the pursuits of oil and gasoline on the pension fund.

“That pension fund director who has to serve the interests of Imperial Oil … that’s a very different thing than the best interests of you or I.”

— Jaela Bernstien

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