Category Archives: Blogs

Blogs | Environmental justice | January 21, 2013

Help save Ontario’s endangered species

Ontario’s Endangered Species Act is a key law that protects the province’s endangered wildlife and habitat. The law is one of the best in the country. When corporations plan a project that affects species at risk, they must obtain a permit. The industry or developer must come up with a plan that protects endangered species. The company must comply with the terms of the permit, and the environmental impacts are monitored.

The Endangered Species Act is now endangered by recent proposals by the province. Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has proposed granting blanket exemptions for industrial activities. The exemptions would apply to mining, logging, quarries, suburban housing developments, hydroelectric dams and other types of projects.

What will be the long-term impact on Ontario’s endangered species?

The Ministry’s proposals would allow for broad exemptions for many industrial activities. If the proposals are approved, the province will not monitor the impacts of many industrial projects. With “voluntary” measures, we could lose endangered species.

Are you disturbed by MNR’s proposals? We certainly are. We hope you will take a moment to speak out for Ontario’s endangered species. Make sure your opinion is counted. We don’t want exemptions for industries and developers. We want Ontario to protect endangered wildlife and plants. Don’t delay — we have less than a week to comment.

To register your comments, visit Ontario’s Environmental Registry:

http://www.ebr.gov.on.ca/ERS-WEB-External/displaynoticecontent.do?noticeId=MTE4MDY5&statusId=MTc2NzEx&language=en

To make sure your comments are counted, be sure to include the EBR Registry Number 011-7696. The comment period has been extended to January 25, 2013.

Beatrice Olivastri

Climate change and farmers’ livelihoods

Farmers across Canada have been dealing with changing weather patterns in recent years. From droughts and floods in the Prairies to storms and blights in the Maritimes, people who rely on the land to make a living are suddenly being forced to adapt.

Over the past few months one of our volunteer researchers, Bryan Dale, has been looking into these issues. So far, his investigation has proven to be very revealing, as farmers from across the country have shared diverse and troubling stories about how climate change is affecting them.

In Ontario, for example, apple farmers are struggling through one of the worst growing years in recent memory. Due to an unusually long period of warm weather in March, followed by a spring frost, the buds of most apple trees were killed off, leaving farmers with 15 to 20 per cent of their usual yield. Producers in the southwest of the province have reported that this may be the worst climatic event they’ve experienced since 1945.

On coastal areas of British Columbia apple farmers have also experienced problems, but for a different reason. In that region, a severe infestation of tent caterpillars devastated crops and forced farmers to cancel a long-standing apple festival. As in Ontario, they are left hoping that these types of extreme circumstances will not develop into a pattern that would be repeated with any frequency.

Yet this may be just what is in store for farmers. According to a researcher with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Quebec, scientists are developing a range of models to predict how anticipated fluctuations in weather patterns and infestations by pests may affect various crops. While some vegetables may benefit from our changing climate, there is certainly many that will suffer, compelling agricultural producers to change both how and what they grow.

It is already clear that many farmers are paying the price of having to adapt. Apart from crop yields that have plummeted due to extreme weather events, most producers have noticed that the seasons are changing. According to one organic grower, “Due to weather volatility, we are seeing a lot of farmers add greenhouses and hoop-houses to their operations, to help create more stable environments. Certainly, the Maritime farmers are seeing strong storms from hurricanes. Blight and fusarium are also quite common now.”

Friends of the Earth will continue to look further into these issues, including by exploring how small-scale and organic farmers may be disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of increasingly severe and frequent climatic events. We will also examine whether existing government compensation programs may be insufficient to help farmers adapt as they need to. Throughout, our research will consider the political or legal recourses these farmers may have, and how we can support them.

If trends such as those witnessed this year are to continue, agricultural producers will certainly need the support. Whether it is livestock farmers who do not have enough hay to feed their animals due to drought, or maple syrup farmers who are dealing with a noticeable decline in the quality of their product, across Canada people are wondering what is in store.

And, of course, consumers need to be concerned about these trends as well. As the bumper stickers say, farmers feed cities.

Beatrice Olivastri

Blogs | Environmental justice | September 19, 2012

Ontario needs to clean up its act on environmental rights

September 19, 2012

By Beatrice Olivastri, CEO, Friends of the Earth Canada

Friends of the Earth thanks Gord Miller, Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner for his timely report — Losing Touch — in which he says the Environmental Bill of Rights (EBR) is one of the most significant environmental laws of our time. Friends of the Earth has lauded Ontario as the most progressive jurisdiction in Canada in its provision of environmental rights under the EBR based on our analysis of environmental rights across Canada (“Standing On Guard,” 2009).

However, today, the Environmental Commissioner said, “I am astounded by the level of disregard and contempt being shown to the statutory requirement of the Environmental Bill of Rights… Senior members of the Ontario Public Service are ignoring their responsibility to support and implement the will of the Legislative Assembly.”

And, he singles out Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources for special criticism. He says it is a “chronic offender” in evading its obligations under the Environmental Bill of Rights and cites this Ministry’s attempt to hide the inadequacies of the Provincial Wildlife Population Monitoring Program Plan from public view. In his video presentation, Mr. Miller comments on the potential trade impact from eroding confidence in Ontario’s performance, for example, in delivering sustainable forest management which depended on the successful delivery of this Monitoring Plan.

Today’s report is a very useful window on the gap between what’s on the books and how the Ministries and their officials actually deliver on environmental rights. It’s worrisome to see the sneakiness of the federal bureaucracy mirrored in the Ontario budget process. Mr. Miller says the magnitude of environmental changes in a budget bill is unprecedented.

Let me say that we expected better of Ontario. As a pioneer in delivering environmental rights, we know there was a learning curve. But after 18 years, we expect Ontario to be leading the way, not losing touch with this critical responsibility. It’s time for Premier McGuinty to set the record straight and instruct his cabinet secretary to make the delivery of environmental rights a priority.

For more information visit the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario’s website to download the report or view a video of the press conference.

Blogs | Climate and energy | Environmental justice | June 20, 2012

Friends of the Earth in Rio

On June 19, Friends of the Earth (FoE) released a report critiquing the corporate capture of the United Nations. Corporate capture means that governments are not doing their job and that they have become advocates for the corporate agenda. Popular movements have risen to the occasion in a re-energized drive to democratize the political process and take back control over our lives and nature.

This new energy was evident from the beginning of the popular forum. Unity and integrated coherence are the bywords. Unlike the highly fragmented, dispersed World Social Forums and the UN process itself, the People’s Forum discussions were consolidated into five broad and interconnected dimensions, each with its own plenary and tent. These include energy and extractive industries, food sovereignty and decommodification of nature. The focus at the plenaries was first, to come to a consensus on structural roots of the sustainability crises and false solutions; second, to articulate peoples’ solutions; and third, implementation of solutions. After considerable popular input, discussions of these five dimensions are being integrated into one declaration to be considered by a Peoples’ Assembly at the end of the Summit.

The morning of June 18, FoE delegates joined the World March of Women’s mobilization Against the Commodification of Life and Our Common Heritage. Downtown Rio was brought to a standstill by a multitude of women including Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer (LGBTQ) folks, unionists, farmers, students, Indigenous women, women of faith, people from all walks of life in varying degrees of dress and undress with its multiple meanings. It was exhilarating to be engulfed by a mass of jubilating, dancing, singing, chanting feminists and their allies amongst men. While confronting the police we shouted “where are our disappeared?”

Today (June 19) we went to the Rio Centre where the official government meetings take place. There was a notable lunch time demonstration by at least 200 women from all over the world. The women formed concentric circles facing outwards. They waved purple scarves and chanted slogans in many languages affirming women’s power including “women’s rights are human rights,” “women’s rights not corporate rights,” “women and the planet are not for sale” and “shame on them.” Their signs condemned our ‘do nothing’ governments. The signs said “against greed economy,” “Reproductive Rights!,” “women’s rights now,” “women defending sexual and reproductive health and rights,” “justice, gender and ecology,” “women as the voice for the right to a healthy environment.”

The demonstrations and convergences at the Peoples’ Forum affirmed the commonalities of our struggles globally. We also made solidarity visits to three communities devastated and condemned to death by the ‘development’ of the world’s second largest mining corporation, Vale, and Petrobras, a state within the Brazilian state. The “Rio+Toxic” tours revealed how these global firms have dispossessed self-sufficient, autonomous fishing peoples and farmers of their homes, land, access to the sea and subsistence. Their rich cultures can’t be passed on to their children because the people have been forced into wage slavery. One father with tears in his eyes decried the degradation of many young women reduced to prostitution in the wake of Thyssen-Krupp-Vale’s iron ore smelter.

This evening the communities and workers affected by Vale gathered from all over the world to evaluate and extend coordinated resistance. The Vale-affected communities in Rio and the international delegates who had visited them met this morning to build solidarity and solutions prior to a public demonstration. They then marched from Flamingo beach to Vale’s global head office. With this vocal mobilization countering the impotence of captured governance, we can only expect an escalation of people’s confident assertions of alternatives in the build up to the concluding People’s Assembly.

Terisa Turner and Terran Giacomini

Terisa Turner and Terran Giacomini are representing Friends of the Earth Canada at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Blogs | Climate and energy | Environmental justice | December 14, 2011

Oh Canada — you’re not free to cut and run from Kyoto

By my calculation, by the time Canada’s withdrawal kicks in one year from now, we will have had commitments under the Kyoto Protocol for five years less 19 days.

Professor Nigel Bankes from the Faculty of Law at University of Calgary reviews law pertaining to withdrawal from an international environmental agreement in his blog. He cites the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) and its Article 71 that provides that where treaty relations come to an end the termination of those relations:
(a) releases the parties from any obligation further to perform the treaty;
(b) does not affect any right, obligation or legal situation of the parties created through the execution of the treaty prior to its termination.

Prof. Bankes says that while Article 71 of the VCLT makes it clear that in withdrawing Canada can avoid prospective obligations under the Protocol but that it cannot avoid obligations that have already accrued. So who might assess those obligations?

Enter the UNFCCC Compliance Mechanism, designed to strengthen the Protocol’s environmental integrity, support the carbon market’s credibility and ensure transparency of accounting by Parties. Its Enforcement Branch has the responsibility to determine consequences for Parties not meeting their commitments. It can only consider questions raised by another Party or its expert review teams.

Some thinking has it that compliance can only be assessed after all the reporting is delivered — likely a year after the 2012 end date of the first commitment period. But why wait to assess Canada and clarify accrued obligations? Is there one stalwart Party, an outraged developing country, perhaps, that would stand up to refer Canada to the enforcement committee p.d.q.?

I, for one, see moral and legal reasons why Canada has accrued obligations. I’d like to know what they are and how Canada will address them. The UNFCCC Enforcement Branch should not wait for post 2012 review but step up its review forthwith.

Beatrice Olivastri