Prioritizing Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health in BC

BC faces a biodiversity crisis. The province relies on a patchwork of legislation that prioritizes resource extraction over ecological values, leading to piecemeal protection, ecological degradation, and uncertainty on the land base. We need a clear framework, and ultimately a law, to prioritize biodiversity and ecosystem health. This was recommended in the Old Growth Strategic Review, which government has long committed to implement in full. It is critical for the BC government to finalize this work and enshrine this prioritization into law to support thriving ecosystems and communities, now and into the future.

BC is Canada’s most biodiverse province but is also home to the greatest number of species at risk as compared to its counterparts. While the province has a reputation for environmental values, in reality our environmental protections are often fragmented and undermined by legal frameworks that prioritize natural resource extraction. Not only does this lead to deeply inadequate environmental protections, it also puts the long-term wellbeing of people and communities at risk with unsustainable resource practices and threats to the natural systems that keep our communities safe and healthy.

This crossroads was recognized in the 2020 Old Growth Strategic Review (OGSR), an independent expert body tasked with canvassing the crisis facing the province’s old growth forests. The OGSR outlined the critical need for a paradigm shift to prioritize biodiversity and ecosystem health, recognizing that the current system was failing the environment, the economy, and communities. The BC government committed to this, along with the other 13 recommendations of the OGSR shortly after its release.

Progress towards this commitment was seen in late 2023 with the release of a draft Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework, which charts a high-level path for the province towards this goal. As the draft Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework (BEHF) explains:

“The Framework sets the stage for the desired transformational shift from a land management system that prioritizes resource extraction (subject to constraints) to a future that is proactive, prioritizes the conservation and management of ecosystem health and biodiversity, and is implemented jointly with title and rights holders.”

Almost 8,000 submissions were made in the public engagement period that followed the release of the draft, most of them positive and encouraging more action in the direction it set out. Unfortunately the BC government has provided no public update on progress toward finalizing the Framework.

We were pleased to see the release of the draft Framework, but this work must now be finished to ensure that these values are upheld. Ecosystems across BC need both immediate concrete protections and clear long-term planning guided by legal direction to prioritize biodiversity and ecosystem health.

To see this process through and protect critical ecosystems, BC must:

  • Launch immediate, on-the-ground measures to ensure that at-risk ecosystems remain intact while Framework finalization and legislation processes unfold;

  • Strengthen, finalize and release the BEH Framework to set a clear direction for next steps; and

  • Initiate the process for co-development of a new law for biodiversity and ecosystem health to ensure these objectives are legally enshrined.