The Canadian government has launched a public consultation on its 2030 biodiversity strategy, asking citizens to provide their thoughts on what must be included in the future plan as it aims to finalise a draft version by the end of the year.
The Canadian minister of environment and climate change, Steven Guilbeault, unveiled the call for responses on Monday which will be open to the public until July 14 as the country looks to develop its plan ahead of the UN’s biannual biodiversity COP16 summit to be held in Turkey in 2024.
“Building off the momentum of hosting COP15 in Montreal last December, we are inviting Canadians to join in and speak up to help shape our domestic strategy for implementation of the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework,” said Guilbeault in a statement.
“Through this discussion, we want to bring forward the full diversity of Canadian perspectives so that we can build an ambitious and inclusive strategy. Nature cannot wait for us. We need to act now.”
The strategy will be developed and implemented in collaboration with provinces, territories, and Indigenous representatives, with input from other partners and stakeholders, as well as information provided by the public consultation.
In the coming months, there will be further opportunities for the public to help shape the 2030 strategy, with the government added, as it targets a draft plan to be ready for review by the end of 2023.
At COP15 held in Montreal at the end of last year, nearly 200 nations adopted the historic Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) which aims to safeguard the world’s nature, halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, and put nature on a path to recovery by 2050.
The launch of the consultations in Canada comes ahead of the federal-provincial-territorial meeting of environment ministers later in May, where Guilbeault is expected to reinforce the call to provinces and territories to join the federal government in helping to meet its nature and biodiversity targets.
Among the core tenets of the GBF was a goal to protect 30% of the world’s nature by 2030 and Canada has already pledged more than $5 billion in investments for nature protection and restoration as part of this goal, the government said, though added in a statement that “more progress is needed”.
By Roy Manuell – roy@carbon-pulse.com
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