Indigenous-led Nature Based Greenhouse Gas Offsets: One Route Towards Reconciliation in Canada

By Steven Nitah, Indigenous Leadership Initiative and CRP Leadership Circle, and

Mary-Kate Craig, PhD Candidate, Anwaatin Inc.

July 8, 2020

Canada has an incredibly valuable asset in its natural systems. In the face of climate change, this is an asset whose value the world can now recognize. Previously, Canadian society tended to look at these natural systems as resources that were only valuable when cut down, used and processed in some way. Now, in the face of the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, Canada and the world are catching up to Indigenous peoples who have always known and advocated for the importance and interconnectedness of natural systems. As a part of the transition to a low carbon future, Indigenous-led, nature-based greenhouse gas (GHG) offsets could play a central role.

In an earlier blog, the CRP explored the alignment between nature-based solutions and Indigenous-led conservation. We reported that nature-based solutions hold potential—when led by Indigenous peoples—to contribute to economic development while supporting Indigenous governance and cultures.

Science shows that respectful relationships with the land can play a critical role in mitigating the effects of climate change. Globally, nature-based solutions, such as protection, restoration and management of carbon-rich areas such as forests, grasslands and peatlands are estimated to provide 30%-40% of the carbon dioxide reductions required by 2030 to help maintain global temperatures below 2°C (Griscom et al., 2017). Canada has 9% of the world’s forests including the majority of the boreal forest, the Earth’s largest terrestrial carbon storehouse (Kurz et al., 2013; Lemprière et al., 2013; Pan et al., 2011). The Canadian boreal forest’s soils, plants, and wetlands in combination hold more than 12% of the world’s land-based carbon stock—an almost unimaginable 1715 Pg or 1715 billion tonnes (Bradshaw & Warkentin, 2015). Even the smaller estimate of 367 billion tonnes (Bradshaw & Warkentin, 2015) is equivalent to more than 36 years of global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. Peatlands, a large part of the boreal, are globally important and store more carbon than any other ecosystem for a longer period of time (Dunn & Freeman, 2011; Turetsky et al., 2015). The second largest peatland in the world lies in the Lower James Bay region within the traditional territories of numerous First Nations.

Indigenous peoples continue to have respectful relationships with these carbon-rich ecosystems which inevitably correlate with the location of Indigenous territories. Management of the land needs to be, at a minimum, shared with Indigenous nations in co-management arrangements that support Indigenous stewards in creating their own land relationship plans for their territories. Protection or conservation of these territories benefits from using Indigenous and modern Western knowledge systems to reduce carbon loss through integrated land relationship practices (such as prescriptive fire management, wetland protection, and other conservation and stewardship strategies) through Indigenous Guardians.

One approach to creating economic benefit from stewardship activities is through greenhouse gas (GHG) offsets. At its core, as a nature-based solution, GHG offsets from forests or peatlands are an accounting mechanism— a reduction in GHG levels is created through the sequestration and storage of carbon in natural systems that compensate for emissions created elsewhere. Central to creating a reliable, good quality offset are the concepts of additionality and permanence. Additionality refers to the specific carbon reduction that would not have happened without the offset, and permanence refers to the carbon locked up for a specified amount of time – ideally forever. Actualizing the opportunity of Indigenous-led, nature-based solutions GHG offsets intertwine a number of critical issues: conservation of lands and increasing biodiversity, Indigenous rights and own-source economic development, and climate change action. These GHG offsets represent one part of the transition towards a future whereby Indigenous nations are leading the effort to create nature-based solutions, whilst simultaneously creating local conservation economies aligned with nations’ stewardship aspirations. The co-benefits of such projects would be so much greater than emissions reductions alone and could include: restoration and protection of natural systems, economic diversification, training, and employment of Indigenous Guardians, self-determination and cultural revitalization.

Numerous Nations in Canada have expressed interest in creating nature-based solutions which include GHG offset projects as part of their overall land relationship planning. Some have protected, or are in the process of protecting, their traditional territory through Indigenous-led conservation such as Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCAs). One example is Thaidene Nene, a 26,376 square kilometer area of boreal forest and tundra on the east arm of Great Slave Lake in North West Territories. Another is the UNESCO heritage area Pimachiowin Aki, a 29,040 square kilometer part of the ancestral lands of the Anishinabeg people in Manitoba. To date, this win-win strategy has only been applied in a handful of examples of Indigenous-led nature-based solutions GHG offset projects in Canada. The most notable is the Great Bear Carbon Project, in British Columbia (BC) which is an Improved Forest Management project managed by Coastal First Nations that protects 64, 000 square kilometers. The sale of GHG offsets, predominately to the provincial government in BC, supports a thriving conservation economy. This project, however, is hampered by a lack of diverse markets for GHG offsets in Canada. Steps are being taken to create these markets such as the development of a Federal GHG Offset System to encourage cost-effective domestic GHG emissions reductions. Efforts like this are welcome although it is imperative that Indigenous voices are included and are guiding the process.

Elsewhere in the world the creation of GHG offsets have had varying impacts and benefits for Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, nature-based solutions and GHG offsets are about control of land through jurisdictional oversight or management frameworks established through laws, regulations or legal agreements. Some Indigenous peoples have strongly challenged the use of international markets for carbon credits that turn nature’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide into a commodity, and see international carbon trading as a false solution to climate change, one that has too often violated Indigenous peoples’ rights. Serious negative consequences can follow when market-driven approaches to climate change solutions are designed with only carbon sequestration in mind, and when they are not led by Indigenous Nations or created within an Ethical Space. For example, there may be reduced access to traditional territories, infringement on Indigenous rights and reduction in biodiversity.

However, in the United States and Australia, there are recent examples of Indigenous-led nature-based solutions GHG projects that achieve aligned co-benefits and financially benefit Indigenous Nations. These examples provide insights into what might be needed in Canada to allow these projects to proceed at the scale and speed required to form significant contributions to achieving climate change targets (such as Canada’s Paris Agreement objectives to reduce greenhouse gases by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030) and biodiversity targets (such as Aichi Target 11 to conserve 17% of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10% of coastal areas by 2020). Canada has indicated it will protect 30% of its land by 2030.

In the United States, under the cap and trade system, California introduced a forest offset program in 2014. Native American tribes from Maine to Alaska such as the Yurok, Confederated Tribes of Colville, Passamaquoddy and Ahtna Native Corporation have become driving forces in California’s carbon markets, generating millions of dollars by sequestering millions of tonnes of carbon while conserving their traditional lands. This program creates a significant new own-source revenue commodity market which Indigenous Nations use to finance land and natural resource management and restoration. Evidence from Nations such as the Yurok, who have used the proceeds to buy back nearly 60,000 acres of traditional territory, repatriate cultural resources and work towards larger cultural, social and environmental goals, suggests this is a powerful and transformative central pillar in achieving Indigenous-led conservation objectives. The experience in the US has shown that once the pathway to carbon financing was created through a clear regulatory process and an appropriate forestry protocol Tribal Nations who wished to participate were able to organize and mobilize. This rapidly resulted in twelve projects since 2014 that sequester over 56 million tonnes of carbon across the United States.

Australia engaged in payment for ecosystem services to deliver GHG offset projects in partnership with local Indigenous and rural communities through the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI). Later, this developed into the Aboriginal Carbon Fund now one of the world’s leading Indigenous land management and carbon farming programs. The vision of the Aboriginal Carbon Fund is to “catalyse life-changing, community prosperity through carbon farming to build wealth for Traditional Owners with social, cultural environmental and economic core-benefits through the ethical trade of carbon credits with Corporate Australia, government agencies and international bodies”. Indigenous Rangers in Australia are using traditional fire management to reduce the frequency and intensity of large bush fires thus protecting biodiversity while generating carbon credits to support their work. The evidence from the recent bush fires indicates that the regions under these fire prevention programs were less impacted by the bush fires, illustrating the efficacy of this land management approach and creating calls to grow the program to other parts of the country. The Australian example shows that Indigenous peoples’ world views and leadership are central to climate action and protection of natural systems. In principle, carbon markets and associated payment for ecosystem services schemes allow Indigenous landholders and managers to achieve desired co-benefits. In 2017, Australia’s Aboriginal Carbon Fund signed an agreement with some of Canada’s First Nations to help build a similar program in Canada.

Humanity’s past extractive approaches have caused widespread harm and have led us to the predicament we are now facing. Indigenous leaders have already achieved much progress by: changing the face of conservation and community-led, ecosystem-based land use planning; enhancing, expanding and establishing new protected areas under Indigenous leadership and community direction; and putting Indigenous Guardians on the ground to manage lands and waters in accordance with Indigenous laws, Indigenous knowledge, and community priorities.

To date there is little research to test what key conditions are required for Indigenous-led nature-based solutions GHG offset projects to occur at scale in Canada. What is clear is that protection of the unique ecosystems that exist in Canada are key to meeting global targets to reduce carbon emissions and also to conserve biodiversity.

The central question is what should be protected and who should pay for it? At the core, this is about control of land. One cannot talk about reconciliation in Canada without talking about land. It seems only right that if nature-based solutions can get the world a third of the way towards the agreements that were made in Paris, then Indigenous peoples, who are leading the way, should be beneficiaries of this effort. There won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution; however, there will be factors which will be consistently required to either enable a project to move forward or disable its progress. The path that we need to walk forwards is known, yet it is currently littered with barriers. Many of these barriers are related to Canada’s colonial history, which has created muddy waters around key conditions such as land tenure making it complicated for Indigenous stewards to delineate their right to manage resources in their traditional territories.

Now is the time to take the foundation of what has been started and create the means for Canada, which holds a massive fiscal debt, to generate funds from the global economy through actualizing nature-based solutions whilst supporting the transition to thriving Indigenous-led conservation-based economies. Indigenous Peoples are critical to the success of nature-based solutions to climate change (Townsend, Moola, & Craig, 2020) and it is time for the rest of the world to support the protection of our vast intact carbon rich lands. It is necessary that policy mechanisms and market levers create conditions whereby these solutions are preferentially purchased by large scale emitters, many of whom will have a plan to transition away from carbon output, which many nations would likely support. Consistent with this there needs to be: 1) an established GHG offset project market, as has been created in the US through cap and trade with motivated buyers; and, 2) distinct branding and designation for carbon offsets that meet such criteria such as being Indigenous-led or having Indigenous and public government collaboration, contributing to biodiversity protection, or incorporating Indigenous Guardians into the management of the land.

References

Bradshaw, C. J., & Warkentin, I. G. (2015). Global estimates of boreal forest carbon stocks and flux. Global and Planetary Change, 128, 24-30.

Dunn, C., & Freeman, C. (2011). Peatlands: our greatest source of carbon credits? Carbon Management, 2(3), 289-301. doi:10.4155/cmt.11.23

Griscom, B. W., Adams, J., Ellis, P. W., Houghton, R. A., Lomax, G., Miteva, D. A., . . . Fargione, J. (2017). Natural climate solutions. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 114(44), 11645-11650. doi:10.1073/pnas.1710465114

Kurz, W. A., Shaw, C., Boisvenue, C., Stinson, G., Metsaranta, J., Leckie, D., . . . Neilson, E. (2013). Carbon in Canada’s boreal forest—a synthesis. Environmental Reviews, 21(4), 260-292.

Lemprière, T. C., Kurz, W. A., Hogg, E. H., Schmoll, C., Rampley, G. J., Yemshanov, D., . . . Krcmar, E. (2013). Canadian boreal forests and climate change mitigation. Environmental Reviews, 21(4), 293-321. doi:10.1139/er-2013-0039

Pan, Y., Birdsey, R. A., Fang, J., Houghton, R., Kauppi, P. E., Kurz, W. A., . . . Canadell, J. G. (2011). A large and persistent carbon sink in the world’s forests. Science, 1201609.

Townsend, J., Moola, F., & Craig, M.-K. (2020- forthcoming). Indigenous Peoples are critical to the success of nature-based solutions to climate change. FACETS, 5, 1-7. doi:10.1139/facets-2019-0058

Turetsky, M. R., Benscoter, B., Page, S., Rein, G., van der Werf, G. R., & Watts, A. (2015). Global vulnerability of peatlands to fire and carbon loss. Nature Geoscience, 8(1), 11-14. doi:10.1038/ngeo2325

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge Kevin Smith (Ducks Unlimited Canada) for their helpful comments on a draft.

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Indigenous-led Nature Based Greenhouse Gas Offsets: One Route Towards Reconciliation in Canada