The world's largest conservation agreement was signed May 18, 2010. The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement was announced by a consortium of 21 major Canadian forest products companies and nine leading environmental organizations (listed at this link).
The NYTimes explained:
Timber companies and environmentalists unveiled an agreement today that suspends logging and road building on about 70 million acres of Canada's boreal forest for the next three years... In exchange, nine environmental groups have promised to end campaigns urging boycotts of boreal timber products and calling for investors to pull their cash out of companies that sell them.
The Boreal Forest is a global ecosystem larger than the Amazon rainforest. Canada's portion is over 1.3 billion acres. In Canada, it is also home to over 600 First Nations communities. And they were not consulted when the agreement was being made.
Boreal means Northern, as in Aurora Borealis - the Northern Lights.
In the far-north latitudes, just below the treeless tundra of the polar region, a forest of evergreen trees encircles the earth. This is the boreal forest, and it is the biggest terrestrial ecosystem in the world. It is also largely intact, free of roads and industrial development -- especially in Canada
"Earth's Green Crown"
The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement has been widely celebrated as a demonstration of how environmental and logging adversaries were able to meet, discuss their differences and come up with policy that is mutually beneficial to both sides and to the Earth itself.
NYTimes:
The immediate target of the agreement is to protect the woodland caribou, an iconic animal whose population has dwindled. The pause in logging will allow for an exhaustive scientific study of the animal's habitat and migratory needs, said Richard Brooks, forest campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Canada.
For timber companies, the management plans will establish their industry as the world leader in sustainability, said Avrum Lazar, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada. "Our future, our jobs in the future, rest in our being the most environmentally progressive forest industry in the world," said Lazar during a conference call announcing the agreement. "This is a business strategy for us. We're going to ensure that all this environmental progress translates into a market advantage."
Except.
First, no one consulted the First Nations people who make their homes in the affected forest areas. They will. After the agreeement was signed and announced, the signatories including the Canadian Boreal Initiative were careful to say that they have:
begun meetings with provincial governments, First Nations and local communities across the country to seek their leadership and full participation in advancing the goals of the Agreement. Participants recognize that governments, including First Nation governments, are decision makers within their jurisdictions. The Agreement recognizes that aboriginal peoples have constitutionally protected aboriginal and treaty rights that must be respected and engaged in order for the Agreement to fulfill its objectives.
Obviously this belated inclusion is not wildly popular.
The Carrier Sekani Tribal Council is calling on all environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) to improve their policies on working with First Nations communities, particularly CSTC communities that have unresolved land and resource claims in British Columbia, Canada. At a minimum these ENGOs should be adhering to, supporting and promoting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which sets an international minimum standards on how First Nations and indigenous people should be treated. This includes the free, prior and informed consent of our people to decide what happens in our territories.
Vice Tribal Chief Terry Teegee said, "Recently we've learned that the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) accepted $2.5 million dollars from Enbridge to plant trees the company removes from its projects. This happened in spite of objections from First Nations to the Enbridge Gateway pipeline project. It is very concerning." Enbridge is currently proposing to build a twin pipeline through CSTC territory. Both inland and coastal First Nation have united to oppose the Enbridge Gateway pipeline project because the risks of oil spills are not worth a couple of jobs and some money.
"The oil that would flow through the pipeline is the dirtiest oil there is. It comes from the Alberta Tar Sands and is Canada's largest contributor to greenhouse gases," noted Teegee. He added, "It's ironic NCC would work tirelessly to conserve pristine places such as the Great Bear Rainforest and most recently in the Boreal Forest, and then take funds from a company that would put it at risk of destruction if a tanker ran aground or pipeline breached. This makes no sense whatsoever."
Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) is a political territorial organization representing 49 First Nation communities in James Bay Treaty 9 and Ontario portions of Treaty 5 – an area covering two thirds of the province of Ontario.
"Nobody has the right to develop an agreement that affects any of NAN’s lands and resources without consultation, accommodation and consent from us," said NAN Grand Chief Stan Beardy. "This Agreement was made without our knowledge and treats NAN as a stakeholder – not a government... The right of consent is reflected in the spirit and intent of both Treaty 9 and Treaty 5, this is our right," said Beardy. "We must be part of the decision making, benefit from resources in our traditional territory, and be involved in how the land is managed. Environmental groups and forest product companies must have our free, prior and informed consent on these matters. These kinds of agreements have to stop and the true decision makers, First Nations, must be the ones to have the final say."
And, on reservations, responsible logging and other use of the land is an important source of employment and income for geographically isolated, and often impoverished communities with few other economic options. To ban all development for years, without involving the people who live there in the decision, is insulting in the extreme.
Mathias Colomb Cree Nation Chief Arlen
Dumas said the agreement affects about 68 per cent of his community's land. "This does nothing but further shackle our impoverished communities," he said. "It will raise unemployment. It's almost an onslaught on our communities.
Second, they didn't consult anyone else.
The public was also left in the dark while the CBFA was negotiated in secret between nine environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) and 21 forestry companies. The 71-page agreement has yet to be released on the CBFA website. The Vancouver Media Co-op obtained a leaked copy shortly after the deal was announced
writes Dawn Paley.
Finally, the truth of what will be accomplished with this landmark agreement is will almost certainly be far less than that being promised. Already, the exceptions that will water down the accord are being exposed. Paley continues:
Further investigation reveals that this agreement aims to silence all criticism of logging practices in the boreal forest in return for less than two years of diverting harvesting and road building from 72,205 hectares of woodland caribou habitat into other areas of the boreal forest...
Far from protecting caribou lands in their entirety, the outcome of the CBFA ... means 72,205 hectares of harvesting and road building will be "deferred" to "areas outside of caribou range." In other words, there is no change in the amount of harvesting, only in the locations where harvesting takes place. While the agreement technically "covers" a forest twice the size of Germany, the amount of caribou range that will not be cut before 2012 as a result of the agreement is only slightly larger than the City of Toronto...
Finally, the "three year" deal actually started more than a year ago, on April 1, 2009: industry promises for harvesting deferrals expire April 1, 2012.
But the numbers game is far from the only Orwellian aspect of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. Until April 1, 2012, nine ENGOs have signed on to work together with FPAC companies in "developing and advocating for policies and investments that improve the competitiveness of the Canadian forest sector, create a climate of greater investment certainty, while at the same time have a neutral to positive impact on the sector’s ecological performance..."
To ensure that the days of Greenpeace dropping banners from Abitibi-Bowater’s HQ are long forgotten, the agreement stipulates that ENGOs will take back whatever bad things they may have said about FPAC member companies in the past...
The agreement also means that if an environmental group which is not a signatory of the deal should happen to tell someone from, say, the David Suzuki Foundation about plans to denounce one of the companies involved in the CBFA, the person from the Suzuki Foundation must warn FPAC member companies immediately. ENGOs and FPAC will then jointly plan how to respond... In the past, industry has undertaken such SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) suits, but it is precedent-setting that ENGOs have now become willing participants in striking down criticism of forest practices across Canada.
There is a precedent for accomplishing similar results, with inclusion of Native Canadians, and without environmental groups selling themselves out. This link is one example from 2006:
As a sign of new Native power gained in recent court cases, many areas that will be preserved or selectively logged have been chosen based on the oral tradition of Native groups and the opinions of their elders. These include areas with cultural significance like ancient cemeteries, or those with medicinal herbs and cedars big enough to make totem poles, canoes and long houses.
If the federal government agrees, more than $100 million will also be raised by governments and foundations to start ecotourism lodges, shellfish aquaculture and other environmentally sustainable economic activities for the 25,000 people who live in the region.
"Now we can manage our destiny," said Ross Wilson, chairman of the tribal council of the Heiltsuk, one of the Native nations involved. "Without this agreement, we would be going to court forever and we would have to put our children and old ladies dressed in button blankets in the way of the chainsaws," he added, referring to the ceremonial dress worn in past protests.
With respect to the Boreal Forest Agreement, Misipawistic Cree Nation Chief Ovide Mercredi sums it up:
"In many ways this was done to bring peace between the companies and the environmental groups because the environmental movement was affecting the market of the forestry companies. What they forgot to ask themselves was who owns that land? For some reason they forgot to invite us.""