By: Ava S.
Photo from: National Geographic Society
Canada can only hope to achieve their domestic and international biodiversity goals if they continue collaborating with Indigenous Peoples and conserving and protecting our lands and waters. One of Canada’s biodiversity goals is to have 25% of both the lands and oceans conserved, by the end of 2025. Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas and Marine Protected Areas will play a key role in the country reaching that goal.
What are Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs)?
Indigenous protected and conserved areas are lands, waters, and ice that are governed under the leadership of Indigenous Peoples. Meaning, they are the leading voice in the decisions and actions that are made to protect the areas. The process to create an IPCA often includes extensive community planning while they reflect on Indigenous laws and traditions to ensure Indigenous Peoples can maintain their relationship with the land, water, and ice. While IPCAs can take many different forms, they all share three common features: Indigenous-led, represent a long-term commitment to conservation, and elevate Indigenous rights and responsibilities.
The History of IPCAs:
Environment and Climate Change Canada is currently investing over $100 million in nature conservation projects led by Indigenous communities across Canada, but it hasn’t always been this way.
Photo from: CPAWS
Although the original idea for Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas originated in Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island in the 1980s, the first IPCA ever created was the Edéhzhie Protected Area in the Northwest Territories. It is a co-managed partnership between Dehcho First Nations and the Government of Canada. However, Since 2018, three IPCAs have been established: Ts'udé Nilįné Tueyata, Edéhzhíe, and Thaidene Nëné, all of which are in the Northwest Territories.
What is the importance of IPCAs?
A photo of the Indigenous Circle of Experts (ICE), a group that creates and manages IPCAs.
Photo from: Ilinationhood
The lands, waters, and ice protected as IPCAs help sustain Indigenous culture and the health of the natural country. Indigenous Peoples have a long-standing physical and spiritual relationship with their territories and the nature that encompasses them. Part of this relationship includes the requirement to give back to the land while simultaneously benefitting from the resources it provides. They generate positive outcomes for biodiversity conservation, local livelihoods, and climate change adaptation. The areas additionally serve as a pathway to a reconciled relationship with the country’s Indigenous Peoples. Because of their multi-generational view of stewarding the areas, IPCAs will play a large role in helping Canada on their pathway to Target 1, their version of UNBCD’s Aichi Target 11.
What are Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)?
For Canada, it is difficult to determine what defines a Marine Protected Area. This stems from the country’s lack of a standards policy for what can and cannot occur within a MPA. Currently, only a statement exists as an outline for MPA creation and governance. The 29 other countries that have signed on with Canada to the Global Ocean Alliance 30 by 30 plan all have standards in place for their MPAs. At a minimum, they mostly include the restriction of oil and gas activities, mining, bottom trawling, and dumping.
Photo from: DFO
Despite having a clear set of standards in place, there are currently 14 MPAs across Canada. Three are in the Arctic ocean, eight are in the Atlantic ocean, and three are in the Pacific. They tally up to 350,000 kilometers squared or about 6% of Canada’s coastal and open waters.
How do marine protected areas work?
MPAs contribute to a healthy marine environment by acting as a nature-based solution to address the impacts of climate change on our oceans by protecting marine ecosystems, habitats, and species. Additionally, they contribute to the Canadian economy by supporting the economic prosperity of local economies and coastal communities.
They are legally protected areas established under the Oceans Act. There are 5 steps required to establish a MPA. In order to be considered by the selection committee, the area first needs to be classified as an Area of Interest (AOI). Then follows an ecological, social, and economical overview of the AOI to determine its importance. They develop a regulatory approach to its conservation through many consultations and then the MPA requires effective management.
How effective are IPCAs and MPAs at protecting the environment?
It was recently estimated in a research article in Nature titled “Rebuilding marine life” that both marine species and their habitats can make a substantial recovery by 2050 when their environment is placed under legal protection that prohibits harmful human activity such as mining and bottom trawling.
While it seems to be unanimous across the research community that strongly protected MPAs/IPCAs generally deliver high levels of success in conservation, poorly protected MPAs don’t always produce the same results. In a research article that debates the effectiveness of MPAs they conclude that a MPAs ability to conserve and protect marine life is partially dependent on the strength of protection it provides. When MPAs are not as strongly-protected as they were designed to be, they are less effective. It is important to remember that just because a well-managed MPA appears to be struggling, it does not mean that it’s protection is not beneficial. According to JC Day, the ecological status of the Great Barrier Reef would likely have been far worse had it not been protected in 2009.
Discussion Questions:
What areas do you believe need protection that haven’t already been legally protected?
What are other features of an effective Marine Protected Area?
Works Cited:
Conservation Through Reconciliation Partnership. Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas. [accessed July 10, 2021]. https://conservation-reconciliation.ca/about-ipcas.
Department of Fisheries and Oceans. (2020, March 3). Marine Protected Areas Across Canada. Government of Canada. https://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/oceans/mpa-zpm/index-eng.html
Duarte CM et al. (2020, April 1). Rebuilding marine life. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2146-7#Fig3.
Giacomodonato H. (2020, May 23). How effective are Canada’s marine protected areas? Shake Up the Estab. https://www.shakeuptheestab.org/post/mpa-effectiveness.
Government of Canada. (2021, January 28). Indigenous leadership and initiatives. https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/nature-legacy/indigenous-leadership-funding.html.
Indigenous Leadership Initiative. Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas. [accessed July 10, 2021]. https://www.ilinationhood.ca/indigenous-protected-and-conserved-areas.
International Union for Conservation of Nature. (2018, February 19). Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs): Pathway to achieving Target 11 Canada through reconciliation. https://www.iucn.org/news/protected-areas/201802/indigenous-protected-and-conserved-areas-ipcas-pathway-achieving-target-11-canada-through-reconciliation.