“This living flowing land
Is all there is forever”
—Gary Snyder (1969)
COP26 opened with unprecedented dire warnings that followed up on the alarm from the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that humanity is now in “code red.” In 2019 the scientific community called for “transformational change.” That never materialized.
It is becoming increasingly evident that climate change is developing a momentum of its own. Even the mechanistic models, which do not factor in feedback loops, make clear that climate change cannot be reversed, but only stabilized – even if we manage to limit fossil fuel consumption and our global CO2 output.
In July, Biodiversity and Climate Change: Workshop Report was released by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and the IPBES (Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). This was the first official joint conclusion that the climate change crisis and the biodiversity crisis are in fact one and the same. They declared that one cannot address climate change without addressing biodiversity collapse.
Biodiversity, climate: same crisis
Endangered species protection is integral to addressing climate change. Nature is not here as a passive disposal system for human pollution. Oceans and forests are not just “sinks” for 50% of our CO2 production.
Nature is a complex living system which adjusts to shifting inputs and controls all of the planet’s biological, geological and chemical cycling. As the chair of the report committee puts it: “Changes in biodiversity in turn affect climate, especially through impacts on nitrogen, carbon, and water cycles.” Preserving these dynamics is essential to addressing climate change and the future of humanity.
This relationship is non-linear. It is a web that humans share with other species. It creates a system of reciprocal obligations. When we interpret these organisms as providers of “ecosystem services” on which our survival depends, we tacitly acknowledge a contractual relationship that imposes fiduciary obligations on us, if not to other species, at the very least to future generations of our species.
Biodiversity and Climate Change is a timely acknowledgement of a shift in mainstream scientific thinking away from mechanistic models. In keeping with shifts in the scientific understanding of plant ecology, as illustrated by the work of Dr. Suzanne Simard and others, it confirms that plants are endowed with a measure of sentience, not that different from animals like humans. This planet is a living planet, and that the land about us is a living entity. It effectively states that an abiotic process, climate, is controlled by assemblages of biotic organisms of which human civilization is a beneficiary.
BC: “timber supply” über alles
When we realize that the forest is not a just a bunch of “resources” there for the taking, the game changes – which should modify our approach to forest management. The forest is a wood-wide web exchanging information, not just along the mycorrhizal network, but also acoustically with infrasound, and chemically with the release of aerosols and pheromones. The living world is a democratic information network we ignore at our peril, but to which science and Indigenous knowledges provide us access.
The amendments to the Forest and Range Practices Act introduced this year purport to “reshape” forest management in BC. In fact, they are a perpetuation of the same colonial-industrial mindset.
The Forest and Range Practices Act prohibits protecting wildlife or endangered species if it “unduly reduce[s] the supply of timber from British Columbia’s forests.” (Section 2 of the Government Actions Regulation, BC Reg 582/2004 to the Forest and Range Practices Act, S.B.C. 2002, c. 69).
“Logging without collecting basic information on species present is a total abdication of minimal science.”
This clause defines the actual intent and priorities of BC’s Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development (FLNRORD), no matter how you “reshape” forest management. Shockingly, in BC endangered species “protection” lies with FLNRORD, a ministry mandated to allow species’ annihilation if they stand in the way of “the timber supply.”
This is a matter of considerable concern given the IPCC/IPBES urgent call to protect biodiversity, and the recent experience of species destruction at Fairy Creek. When Dr. Royann Petrell documented the previously-unknown presence of Western Screech owls (Megascops kennicottii), it became clear that BC Timber Sales and FLNRORD were not carrying out the biological assessments needed to ascertain which species, endangered or not, might be affected by logging.
Although the new amendments and FLNRORD tell us that they are proceeding “scientifically,” logging without collecting all necessary basic information on species present in a management area to be logged is a total abdication of minimal science. Science does not matter when the overriding objective is “the timber supply.”
It is clear that FLNRORD is in deep conflict of interest and should not be allowed to oversee and control the fate of species at risk in BC. Biodiversity and Climate Change stipulates that the ongoing climate change and biodiversity emergencies need to be addressed together.
The responsibility for species at risk needs to be stripped from FLNRORD and moved to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change where it rightly belongs.
Science calls for transformational systemic change. It is time to recognize our fiduciary obligations to a living world for future generations.
Loys Maingon is BC director, Canadian Society of Environmental Biologists.
