The framework, to be known as the Canadian Sustainable Finance Taxonomy, will act as a kind of voluntary rule book for the financial industry. Its chief contribution will be to establish a consensus for activities that are considered acceptable investments under the Paris Agreement on climate change.

The project will provide guidance to investors to steer dollars toward investments that help mitigate global warming. The taxonomy’s architects and advocates hope it will attract at least some of the estimated $140 billion a year needed for Canada to reach its goal of a net-zero economy by 2050.

After five years of study, work on the taxonomy is finally underway. Operating with federal funding but independent from government, a planning council to lead the initiative was appointed earlier this year from representatives of the financial industry, universities and climate organizations. The Canadian Climate Institute is providing research and administrative support.

The shape of the debate

As the wars in Ukraine and Iran drive up fuel prices, demand is growing both for new sources of oil and gas and for non-fossil-fuel alternatives. The financial industry is looking for sustainable investment guidance on this energy crisis, setting the stage for a debate over the Canadian version of what are now about 50 sustainable finance taxonomies in use or under development around the world.

The debate boils down to whether there’s a place for oil and gas in the taxonomy. In April, about 30 climate organizations under the name Credible Taxonomy Canada called for the oil and gas sector to be excluded from the taxonomy to eliminate the possibility the industry could use it as cover to expand fossil-fuel production at a time when the scientific community is calling for it to be phased out.

In contrast, the taxonomy planning council has recently proposed that there should be an abatement category aimed at encouraging the oil and gas industry to reduce its carbon emissions. The category would define conditions under which the fossil-fuel industry could label investments in carbon reduction as a legitimate sustainable finance activity under the taxonomy.

The planning council laid out this proposal in a consultation paper issued last month. Ordinarily, carbon abatement in any industry is welcomed by climate advocates. But the fear is that the taxonomy will provide a seal of approval for minor emission reductions that enable the oil and gas industry to ramp up production, locking in long-term carbon emissions. “Creating an ‘abatement’ category risks legitimizing continued fossil‑fuel growth rather than aligning finance with science‑based pathways that actually reduce emissions,” states a submission to the consultation portal from the energy-sector-management research unit of the HEC business school at the University of Montreal. “Abatement measures risk becoming a greenwashing mechanism that legitimizes continued fossil fuel growth rather than supporting a credible, Paris-aligned taxonomy.”

Zero Waste Canada, a pollution-reduction non-profit, said in a submission that the proposed abatement category could give a false “sustainable-finance designation” to fossil-fuel emission-reduction investments. “These industries should be required to reduce emissions and pollution, but those obligations do not automatically constitute sustainable investment.”

A third wheel

According to the consultation paper, “green” investments would include net-zero activities such as renewable-energy generation and storage and electric vehicle manufacturing. The “transition” category would include investment in high-emitting activities to support a transition to net-zero, such as the electrification of steelmaking. “Abatement” activities are defined as significant near-term emission-reduction activities in high-emitting industries not aligned with the Paris Agreement, such as oil and gas. Capping methane emissions from leaking oil and gas wells is an example of an abatement investment.

The council has named six sectors for priority in establishing green and transition guidelines: electricity, buildings and transportation in 2026; and mining, manufacturing and agriculture/forestry in 2027. If approved, finalization of the abatement category wouldn’t happen until 2028.

RELATED STORIES

Alberta will set its own methane regulations in new agreement with federal government

A clash over natural gas is brewing as Canada readies more action on green investing

A captain of mining tries to rehabilitate the industry

Marlene Puffer, chair of the taxonomy planning council, says it’s not sufficient to focus only on green and transition activities. She says it’s also important to define abatement activities in industries expected to decline with the climate transition. Otherwise, the financial industry and the oil and gas sector could create their own definitions of acceptable abatement, challenging the relevance of the taxonomy. “There’s value in creating very clear definitions and distinctions between what fits into this taxonomy, into which category and under what conditions, and what doesn’t,” she says in an interview. “Leaving the abatement category out would leave a black hole in the Canadian marketplace.”

The success of the abatement category will depend on the strength of taxonomy “guardrails,” the yet-to-be-defined rules setting the conditions for investments in each category, says Jonathan Arnold, head of sustainable finance at the Canadian Climate Institute and chief researcher for the taxonomy council. “The real test for the abatement category is: Can you get emissions reductions in the short term without locking in emissions in the long term?”

Some of the potential guardrails cited in the report include allowing abatement on existing assets only, not new projects; limiting the abatement category to measures that don’t extend the life of fossil-fuel assets; stipulating that abatement projects achieve a significant reduction in emissions; and requiring that assets are decommissioned by a certain date.

Abatement without expansion

When asked whether the abatement category could be applied to the proposed Alberta oil sands carbon-capture project, Puffer, a seasoned pension industry executive, says: “It’s too early to speculate on the inclusion of any specific project. We need to do a lot more work related to the guardrails and criteria. But, really, clearly, the purpose of this category is not to support the expansion of oil and gas production in Canada. It’s to address and abate current emissions that are already in place.”

Despite these assurances, opposition to the abatement category is increasing on the consultation portal as the submission deadline of August 13 approaches.

“We need to move more capital into Paris-aligned investments,” writes one individual contributor to the consultation (submissions by individuals on the portal are anonymous). “This cannot include fossil fuel production which is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada and continues to grow every year.”

Some of the experts appointed to a technical group advising the planning council warn of a greenwashing risk in the abatement category. “It feels like this category has been created to appease the oil and gas lobby, to appease the financial sector that is heavily invested in the oil and gas industry,” says Kyra Bell-Pasht, a member of the technical advisory group. “The only way it would appease them is if they could use it to justify continued investment activities, which would require greenwashing.”

Will abated assets be decommissioned?

One of the problems with the abatement category guardrails is the absence of a guarantee that the guardrail conditions will be enforced after an abated investment is made. Bell-Pasht uses the example of a potential requirement to decommission oil and gas assets by a certain date, ensuring that they don’t continue to produce end-use emissions indefinitely after their well or terminal emissions are abated. With no mechanism to enforce the decommissioning, she says a company could simply ignore the wind-down date and continue operating the asset.

Puffer pushes back on this. Any company offering an abatement project or financial institution issuing an abatement investment — and then reneging on the guardrail conditions — would face serious reputational damage in the market, she says. Companies or financial institutions offering abatement investments under the taxonomy and then ignoring the guardrails “are not going to issue again for a very long time,” she says.

Aaron Cosbey, a member of the taxonomy planning council and chair of the technical advisory group, says abatement investments with stringent guardrails could help Canada to meet its climate goals of a net-zero economy by 2050. “They would foster compliance with Paris targets because they’re decreasing emissions, and not increasing the viability of [oil and gas] sectors, which should be phasing down along the road to Paris compliance,” says Cosbey, senior associate with the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

Eugene Ellmen writes on sustainable business and finance. He is a former executive director of the Canadian Social Investment Organization (now the Responsible Investment Association).

The post Debate over fossil-fuel abatement erupts in climate finance community appeared first on Corporate Knights.

And now there’s a new element in the mix: the seaweed belt is changing shape. The most significant patch, known as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, was first detected in 2011 and now measures as much as 8,800 kilometres long. It can be found from West Africa to the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. By the end of last year, it weighed 38 million metric tons, a 40% increase from its last record in 2022.

Why so much seaweed? There isn’t a single reason that scientists can point to, but rather a variety of shifting factors. “The climate is having a very significant effect on this bloom, but there are many underlying drivers of climate change,” Brian Lapointe, principal investigator at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University, told The New York Times in 2025: “everything from high temperature, extreme rainfall, droughts and rainfall events, and winds.” Meanwhile, a northern patch located in the Sargasso Sea, in the North Atlantic between Nova Scotia and Bermuda, has dwindled by some 90% since 2015, because of warmer water.

The Atlantic seaweed situation is evolving so rapidly that scientists have enlisted NASA to track the bloom from space. The sensitive instruments on their satellites can detect the sargassum signature as it moves across oceans, helping to predict where it is headed and which ecosystems might be more at risk of being overwhelmed by the vegetation.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights.

The post Climate change is redrawing the map of global seaweed blooms appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Over the past week, hundreds of thousands of people in France and Spain fled their homes, many in the dead of night, carrying only what they could. In the coming days and weeks, as evacuation orders lift, some will come home to partially destroyed towns. Others will find only ash.

The fourth heat wave of a broiling summer is underway this week, and Europe has already seen one of its most destructive wildfire seasons on record, leading to one of the largest evacuation of people on the continent since the Second World War. It’s also the latest consequence of climate change, according to a study released on Thursday by World Weather Attribution, a scientific non-profit that analyzes the role of global warming in extreme weather events. Human-induced climate change made the likelihood of fire-prone conditions in France at least twice as likely, and at least 20 times as likely in central Spain.

“This is not an isolated event; it is part of a pattern,” says Maria Alcazar Castilla, the deputy regional director of the International Federation of Red Cross in Europe. The Red Cross is helping coordinate the disaster response effort in both countries and providing supplies and temporary shelter for thousands.

For months leading up to the recent wildfires, Western Europe had been scorched by back-to-back heat waves and an extended drought that dried out trees, shrubs and farmland, turning the landscape into a tinderbox. Climate change makes the confluence of these extremes more likely, scientists say.

Last year, similar conditions created Europe’s worst wildfire season in history, with more than two million hectares burned by September. This year could be on track to surpass that: some 430,000 hectares have burned so far – roughly 100,000 more than this time last year with two months left to go. In Spain alone, the burned area is roughly equivalent to the size of London.

With heat waves projected to continue in the coming weeks, the risk of more fire looms over the continent. Other research on Southern Europe, also released on Thursday, found that summer days with conditions making them prone to extreme fires have more than doubled in recent decades.

At the height of the disaster this week, more than 300,000 people had been displaced across France and Spain. Rural areas that rely on farming and tourism have been the worst hit, Alcazar says. “The impact to the livelihoods of people will be huge.”

The high temperatures that set the stage for these fires had their own devastating consequences. This June was the hottest ever recorded in Western Europe. In addition to causing nuclear reactors and train lines to shut down, the oppressive heat killed thousands of people across the continent in the span of a few weeks.

This summer has shown that climate change is a “national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life,” officials from the United Kingdom and Spain said in a joint statement on Thursday.

Scientific research that links climate change to weather events is a relatively young field known as attribution science. Groups like World Weather Attribution skip the typical publishing process in science and use rapid analysis methods to get answers faster. The goal is to give the public an understanding of the role climate change plays in an extreme event before the news cycle has moved on.

Clair Barnes, a research associate at World Weather Attribution who led the analysis, says this particular study was completed more quickly than the organization’s usual studies. It drew from the group’s earlier research on heat and drought, which, along with wind speed, are key components in so-called fire weather. The group also analyzed historical weather data to compare this year’s fire conditions with those from past summers, as well as with simulations of a world without climate change. “As long as we continue to emit fossil fuels into the atmosphere, those greenhouse gases are going to continue to warm the planet more,” Barnes says. “This is just the beginning of how bad it’s going to be.”

One significant factor, the group found, was a rainier than usual winter in January and February, which prompted a burst of vegetation growth in the spring. Then, as the monthslong drought set in, those plants dried up, becoming the tinder that fuelled these fires.

I don’t think it’s an issue of firefighting capacity or investment. It’s fundamentally an issue of landscape management in the face of global warming.

– Robert Field, fire and climate researcher at Columbia University in New York

This phenomenon, sometimes called “weather whiplash,” is a direct result of climate change. As the atmosphere warms, it gets spongier and thirstier, sucking up more moisture from the land and holding on to it for longer periods of time. That, in turn, leads to more intense rainfall that happens less frequently.

How people use the land can also make wildfire conditions significantly worse, says Robert Field, a fire and climate researcher at Columbia University in New York.

In both France and Spain, abandoned farmland and a shift away from cattle, which graze on plants, might have played a role in fuelling the fire. In France, the wildfire outbreak was centred in the Landes de Gascogne, a coastal region with an abundance of planted pine forests. Research on wildfires worldwide has shown that timber plantations like these can be twice as flammable as natural forests. “I don’t think it’s an issue of firefighting capacity or investment,” Field says. “It’s fundamentally an issue of landscape management in the face of global warming.”

Since Tuesday, firefighters have managed to partially contain many of the fires, and authorities have allowed more than 100,000 evacuees to return home in southwest France. A weak cold front is also on its way to Europe, potentially providing a small window of relief, according to Jason Nicholls, a meteorologist and international forecasting lead at AccuWeather.

But another surge of heat could come as soon as this weekend, with more heat expected by mid-August, forecasts show. “I don’t see any drought relief in the near term, which would mean the wildfire risk will stay very elevated,” Nicholls says. The drought and heat will continue to smother France, Spain and other parts of Central and Western Europe, like Germany and Hungary.

“I’ve been doing international forecasting for 20 years,” Nicholls says. “These wildfires have been some of the worst I’ve ever seen.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/wildfires/study-monster-wildfires-spain-france-attribution/. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

The post ‘Weather whiplash’ helped fuel the wildfires in Spain and France appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The video gives an overview of one of the council’s initiatives called the Beef Researcher Mentorship Program. Launched in 2014, the program pairs early-career researchers with industry stakeholders – farmers as well as marketers and others who work in the business. Brocklebank goes on to say that she’s “really proud that this program allows us to open it up,” welcoming researchers to “make them part of that family.”

In a new article published June 18, Vasile Stanescu, associate professor of communications studies at Mercer University, argues that this beef industry mentorship program is “the opposite of the way it should go.”

That’s not because the industry-funded research is technically wrong or invalid, Stanescu argues. The problem is that this partnership and others like it are enabling the industry to avoid addressing larger existential questions about what the future of the beef industry should be given its role in climate change: roughly a third of all food-related emissions are caused by food production, and the highest driver of those emissions is beef, thanks primarily to cattle burps and land use.

Beef industry funding can help shape a researcher’s career

Stanescu writes that “scientists do not mentor animal agriculture on the best scientific practices” in programs such as these. Instead, “representatives from animal agriculture mentor scientists on their research questions and methodological choices.”

Stanescu quotes government research scientist Robert Gruninger, who was mentored by two owners of a ranch and feedlot and a cattle feed and nutrition consultant. Gruninger credits the mentorship program with knowledge that proved “invaluable” for him to “get the job that I’m in.”

Another researcher, Trevor Coates, who was mentored by a cattle producer and a former executive director of Alberta Beef Producers in 2020, tells Sentient via email that the experience was positive, in particular the networking. “Discussions with my mentors were an important part of that experience,” he says, “helping me gain a better understanding of some of the challenges facing the industry and where my research interests would best fit.”

Scarcity in research funding is a longstanding problem, particularly in food and agriculture research. The industry – whether it’s meat, walnuts or strawberries – has long played an outsized role (though the beef industry’s size and scale dwarfs fruits and vegetables, legumes and plant-based alternatives).

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), “the private sector has historically been the dominant player in the conduct of research and development,” accounting for about 76% of U.S. agricultural research funding in 2013.

Subsequent USDA analyses published in 2022 found that public spending on agricultural research and development has fallen by about one-third from its 2002 peak. Meanwhile, private investment has continued to grow.

While Canada does not track the national percentage of academic agricultural research funded by industry, Canada’s regulatory department for agriculture, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, has also noted that industry is now the dominant funding source for several of its research programs.

The upshot of this is that researchers who study animal agriculture and want to “tell the good news” about livestock production are more likely to find a career and research opportunities.

The research isn’t wrong, but some research questions remain unasked

Stanescu is careful to say that the research on Canada’s beef industry is technically accurate. But funding certain areas of study over others creates “a research landscape where certain research questions flourish – ‘How can we make feedlots more efficient?’ – while others remain unasked and unanswered – ‘How many cattle should Canada raise at all?’”

The program Stanescu studied pairs early-career researchers with cattle producers, according to the group’s website, and also pairs each researcher with another beef or forage industry professional.

For example, Canadian government researcher Stephanie Terry was paired up with a feedlot executive. Yet the beef council’s website does not address what Stanescu calls “the ethical implications” of a scientist working on greenhouse gas mitigation efforts in beef production being mentored by “the CEO of a large-scale feedlot operation.”

Terry went on to research the effects of different on-farm strategies on reducing methane, like feed additives. Though the paper describes the climate effect of methane, it never cites research showing the positive climate impact of reducing herd sizes or eating less meat, according to Stanescu.

There is no evidence that the beef council was the industry group to start Terry on this research path. In fact, prior to the mentorship, Terry had already researched cattle nutrition and its effect on greenhouse gas emissions. And Terry’s research focus has stayed on much the same path, studying the same questions. In 2024, she was part of a team of researchers awarded $7.89 million to study and develop methane mitigation strategies to lower emissions “without reducing the productivity of Canadian dairy and beef cattle.”

Today, Coates also works for the federal agriculture department and tells Sentient in an email that as a scientist within that department, his role is to “help find solutions to problems producers may be facing, including those due to weather or climate challenges.”

Research used to tell the ‘good news’ about beef

Stanescu’s work is part of a growing body of research investigating the meat industry’s influence on academic research to steer and use it for communications strategy.

In a 2024 paper, researchers Jennifer Jacquet and Viveca Morris investigated two industry-funded academic centres: CLEAR, which stands for Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research, at University of California, Davis, and AgNext, at Colorado State University, and their ongoing role “shaping public understanding and public policy related to the livestock industry’s climate impacts.”

In other words, Stanescu argues, the livestock industry responded to its environmental impact “not by transforming production, but by reframing climate science as a communications problem.”

Getahun Legesse, a research scientist for the province of Manitoba, was paired with a feedlot owner and a former chair of Alberta Beef Producers as well as current executive director of Canfax (the market analysis division of the Canadian Cattle Association) and chair of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef’s climate science committee.

According to the council’s website, Legesse had been working on a “collaborative project that aims to define the environmental footprint of Canadian beef” at the time he was selected. The research, funded in part by the council, would go on to become the cornerstone of one industry group’s messaging on beef’s climate impact – defining sustainability by one cherry-picked metric.

The research compared emissions per kilogram of beef from 1981 to 2011 and found that emissions were 14% lower in 2011. This was attributed to a number of on-farm efficiencies, including feed changes and reduced time to slaughter.

But that same research also found that overall greenhouse gas emissions for Canadian beef production went up during that same period, and by 28%.

Legesse’s research was used to inform the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef’s sustainability standards. In 2020, McDonald’s Canada drew on those standards when it advertised its Quarter Pounder burger as “now sustainably sourced.” In fine print, the advertisement stated that “at least 30%” of the beef is sourced from farms and ranchers that met the roundtable’s standards.

Canadian animal law organization Animal Justice lodged a complaint about the McDonald’s advertisement to the Competition Bureau of Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, calling the ads misleading and greenwashing. The company then pulled the ads on its own.

Sentient contacted Legesse for comment but did not receive a reply. A representative for Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada told Sentient that Terry was out of office when reached for comment at the time of publication, but this story may be updated.

Sentient also contacted the Canadian Beef Cattle Research Council multiple times to ask for a comment on Stanescu’s claims. The organization did not respond. But a number of agricultural researchers who have come under public scrutiny for their relationship with the meat industry have argued that their work improves agriculture and that agriculture research is severely underfunded as compared to other areas of scientific research.

Stanescu tells Sentient that mentorship programs like the one initiated by the Canadian Beef Cattle Research Council have larger consequences for scientific research. “They are picking winners or losers,” he says. “They are picking who gets this really big leg up,” he says, and “they’re picking which research gets funded.”

“The goal,” he argues, “is to shape science for what is good for the industry.”

This article originally appeared in Sentient at https://sentientmedia.org/when-the-beef-industry-mentors-climate-scientists/. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled Andrea Brocklebank’s name.

Jessica Scott-Reid is Sentient‘s disinformation correspondent, covering disinformation, misinformation and the impact of both on culture. Her work also appears regularly in The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The post How a beef industry mentorship program can shape scientific research appeared first on Corporate Knights.

While it’s tempting to imagine the majestic Ents stalking Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings, this migration is the more subtle result of seeds dispersing by way of wind, animals and water. Indeed, the movement of tree species echoes other migratory patterns that are also influenced by a warming planet.  

The movement of trees is not new. Scientists have long tracked how these shifts occur, describing them as proof of the resilience of species. But they are happening more quickly because of temperature changes in the planet. One pattern observed is the move away from heat. Some move to higher altitudes, others to areas with more moisture. A new study published in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation paints a more nuanced picture, finding that both climate and anthropogenic factors have to do with tree movement. Between 2000 and 2020, 42% of treelines shifted upslope, while 25% shifted downslope. “The rate of treeline shifts was strongly influenced by anthropogenic disturbances,” the study found, in particular from fires.  

Unsurprisingly, trees are short on speed. They simply may not be able to migrate quickly enough to keep up with the pace of environmental changes. Some scientists are calling for “assisted migration” as a way to help smooth out the adaptation process. In Canada, the practice is taking root. The provinces of British Columbia and Alberta have extended seed transfer zones 200 metres higher for most species, and in B.C., planting of the western larch is now permitted outside of its previous range.  

Assisted migration is not without risks or controversy, and some scientists consider it another example of human meddling. New species may become invasive in a new ecosystem, or they may be ill-equipped to adapt to local soil conditions and sun exposure. “The idea that humans can help fill the gap between the ability of species to migrate and the rate of change in climate conditions is increasingly being considered and debated as a possible management option,” Canada’s Ministry of Natural Resources stated in a 2025 briefing note.  

The post Trees are migrating in response to climate change appeared first on Corporate Knights.

INDIA 

After the Bishrampur open-cast coal mine in India stopped producing coal in 2018, it was repurposed into a tourist destination for boating and cottage rentals.  

CANADA 

In Montreal, a quarry-turned-landfill was converted into an urban greenspace called Frédéric-Back Park, boasting fields of wildflowers and futuristic biogas-capturing wells.  

UNITED STATES 

Since closing in 2001, the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island was slowly transformed into Freshkills Park, New York City’s largest new park in 100 years.  

AUSTRALIA 

The old Western Five open-cut coal mine in Western Australia has been given a new life as Lake Kepwari, a 103-hectare recreational lake for boating and swimming.  

SENEGAL 

The Mbeubeuss landfill on the outskirts of Dakar is being overhauled for better material recovery, with a new eco-park in the works.  

GERMANY 

A disused ironworks in Duisburg has been creatively renovated into the Landschaftspark green space, with a diving centre, climbing gardens, and a giant tunnel slide.  

The post These former industrialized sites have found a greener new life appeared first on Corporate Knights.

New findings from the popular tourism website Booking.com released in April show that more people – nearly three-quarters – factor in extreme weather, in particular heat, when choosing where to visit. The findings are based on a survey of 32,500 people living in 35 countries or territories that include North and South America, Asia, Africa and Europe. Some 55% of the respondents said that certain destinations had become too hot to travel to when they wanted to visit them.  

The toll of recent dramatic summer heat waves in Europe is lodged in our memory. There were more than 47,000 heat-related deaths in Europe in 2023. Rising temperatures are the main engine behind the so-hot coolcation trend.

Hotter summers are also linked to other environmental consequences that are affecting tourism, such as wildfires, drought and water shortages. Parts of Europe are in the midst of historic wildfires this summer. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate in Spain and France, which has been described as one of the biggest evacuations since the Second World War. And another heat wave is expected to set in this week, making the work of tamping down the blaze all the more fraught. Officials in Europe are warning that the wildfire season could stretch into October and November. Wildfires are also raging in Canada, with nearly four million hectares burned so far this year.  

Even before the grim season got underway, Norway was outright marketing its coolcation potential – noting its “lush, green forests” and “crisp, fresh air.” But other Nordic and northern countries have also become magnets.

A 2024 survey by Virtuoso, a luxury travel website, found that travel to northern Europe and Canada went up 44% that summer, while Italy, Greece and France dipped by half a percent. For the typically warmer locales in the northern hemisphere, data from the European Travel Commission show that while the summer months still are the favourite – with 25% of European travellers picking July and August to take a trip – September is a close second, at 22%. 

The coolcation is often billed as a more sustainable form of travel, because it takes the pressure off the typical hot spots and does not strain certain kinds of energy consumption, such as air conditioners. However, the distance travelled is another factor to consider in that calculation.  

The post The ‘coolcation’ takes root amid rising temperatures appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Driven by aggressive provincial housing mandates, multibillion-dollar federal investments in clean energy and electric vehicle supply chains, and the push to unlock critical minerals in regions like Ontario’s Ring of Fire, we are accelerating infrastructure and resource development at a pace not seen in decades. At the same time, Canada has committed not only to protect nature, but to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and put nature on a path to full recovery by 2050.

These goals are typically framed as being in conflict. But the real problem is not the tension between development and nature. It is that we have never built a system that allows them to work together.

Canada’s growth agenda is not optional. Housing shortages, energy systems and major infrastructure projects must move forward quickly. The question is not whether we develop. It is whether we continue to do so in ways that degrade the natural systems our economy depends on, or whether we build a system that allows development and nature to advance together.

The missing piece isn’t capital – it’s architecture

Over the past decade, a familiar argument has taken hold: nature is valuable, essential to the economy and increasingly at risk. The conclusion seems obvious. Capital should flow toward protecting and restoring it.

But it hasn’t, at least not at the scale required.

The reason is not a lack of capital, policy intent or even progress on measurement. It is a lack of architecture. Nature largely remains outside the systems that drive investment decisions. It is measured inconsistently, accounted for incompletely and governed through fragmented, project-by-project processes. The result is predictable: nature remains economically invisible and therefore largely non-investable.

That is now beginning to change.

The economic stakes are enormous. Globally, an estimated $700 billion per year is required by 2030 to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. At the same time, Canadian pension funds and institutional investors manage hundreds of billions in capital seeking long-term, stable returns.

The issue is not capital. It is the absence of structures that allow it to flow into nature.

A convergence of conditions

Canada’s emerging nature strategy signals a structural shift. It positions nature not just as something to protect, but as a foundation of long-term economic prosperity. More importantly, it introduces tools that could fundamentally reshape how development and conservation interact.

One of the most significant is the use of regional assessments under the Impact Assessment Act. This tool is designed to evaluate cumulative environmental, social and economic effects across entire regions, including past, present and future activities.

This is a quiet but profound shift. For decades, environmental decision-making in Canada has been reactive and project-based. Regional assessments are emerging as a mechanism to shift toward proactive, forward-looking land-use planning that can define ecological limits in advance.

They are more than a planning tool. They are the foundation of a functioning nature market.

By defining cumulative impacts, ecological thresholds and development scenarios at a regional scale, regional assessments create the clarity and predictability that capital requires. Without this, nature remains too uncertain to price, too fragmented to manage and, ultimately, too risky to invest in.

If Canada is serious about becoming a nature-positive economy, regional assessments cannot remain occasional exercises. They must be institutionalized, scaled and embedded into how development decisions are made across the country – and quickly.

At the same time, other foundational elements are falling into place. Advances in ecosystem measurement and accounting frameworks are improving how nature is understood and valued. Financial frameworks are beginning to integrate nature-related risks into decision-making. Artificial intelligence, satellite monitoring and environmental data are making it possible to measure and verify ecological outcomes at scale.

Crucially, Indigenous stewardship is emerging as a central pillar of both conservation and economic participation. Large-scale Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, such as the Seal River Watershed, demonstrate how Indigenous leadership can secure vast carbon sinks and protect biodiversity at scale. Mature initiatives like British Columbia’s Great Bear Forest Carbon Project show that conservation can also be highly investable, generating long-term revenue streams through verified ecosystem services.

Paired with financial tools such as Indigenous loan-guarantee programs, Indigenous communities are uniquely positioned to become primary suppliers and equity partners in nature-based solutions.

The constraint is no longer the absence of data alone. While important gaps remain, advances in environmental measurement, accounting and monitoring are rapidly reducing this barrier.

Individually, these developments are important. Together, they represent something more: Canada is no longer missing the pieces. It is missing the architecture.

From protection to recovery – and the case for net gain

This shift is reinforced at the global level. Under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, countries have committed not only to protect nature, but to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and restore ecosystem integrity by 2050.

That ambition goes beyond conservation. It implies a transition from minimizing harm to actively restoring nature – from “no net loss” to net gain. Over time, development must not only reduce its impact, but contribute to rebuilding natural systems.

From limits to markets

If regional planning defines ecological limits, it also creates something markets require: certainty.

That certainty can be translated into a simple but powerful mechanism.

When major projects affect ecosystems, they are generally expected to follow the mitigation hierarchy: avoid, minimize, restore and only then offset residual impacts. In practice, however, its application remains uneven and fragmented, limiting its effectiveness as a foundation for consistent, investable outcomes.

What if those residual impacts were consistently quantified and priced? What if developers were required to deliver not just mitigation, but net-positive outcomes?

This is not theoretical. In the United Kingdom, “biodiversity net gain” rules have already created a functioning market that channels private capital into restoration and conservation.

Canada is now in a position to build its own version – potentially more ambitious and more integrated.

A Canadian nature-positive market

At its core, the system would be straightforward:

• Regional plans define ecological limits and priorities. 
• Developers are required to address impacts, with residual effects converted into measurable obligations. 
• Markets allow those obligations to be met through investment in restoration and ecosystem services. 
• Indigenous communities, conservation authorities and landowners become suppliers of nature-based solutions. 

Over time, this could expand beyond biodiversity to include carbon, water, flood mitigation and habitat, creating multiple, stackable revenue streams.

With the right structure, these projects begin to resemble infrastructure investments, with long-term, stable returns tied to measurable ecological outcomes.

Sticks, carrots – and a familiar playbook

For this system to scale, it will require both regulation and incentives – and, crucially, alignment between federal environmental ambition and provincial jurisdiction over natural resources.

In practice, this means a combination of “sticks” and “carrots”: clear ecological limits, mandatory net-gain requirements and enforceable obligations, alongside tax incentives, blended finance and public guarantees that reduce risk and attract capital.

Canada has used this model before. Flow-through shares and public–private structures helped build the oil, gas and mining sectors. The same logic can now be applied to nature.

A nation-building opportunity

This is not environmental policy. It is economic strategy.

Canada has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to move from protecting nature to financing it, embedding natural assets into the same systems that fund roads, energy and housing.

The choice is no longer between development and conservation. It is between continuing with fragmented approaches that fail to scale or building a system where growth and nature are structurally aligned.

The pieces are now on the table. What remains is the architecture.

Peter van Dijk is a former global finance executive, adjunct professor at Brock University, and incoming PhD researcher at the University of Ottawa focusing on nature finance and the economic architecture for a nature-positive future.

The post How to put nature at the centre of investment decisions appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Eilish, who has sold the digital equivalent of 80 million albums, comes by her green credo honestly. Her mother, actress Maggie Baird, ran a no-meat, no-waste household, where paper towels and Christmas wrap were banned. (Baird now operates Support + Feed, a not-for-profit advocating for a global shift to plant-based food systems.) 

When she started touring, Eilish was horrified by Big Music’s indifference to sustainability. “You would not believe how wasteful this industry is,” Eilish told a CNN reporter last year. Speaking to organizations who wanted to work with her, she says, “You ask them what their plan is to be more eco-conscious, and nobody had a plan.” So she started demanding one.  

With less acclaim than her music has brought her, Eilish has become a Gen Z climate champion. She attended the 2022 Met Gala in a Gucci dress made from recycled materials, lectured Vogue magazine on climate disruption, required concert venues to provide free water-bottle filling stations, and offered vegetarian meals to concert staff. Her Overheated climate-action initiative produced a documentary on climate change, alongside an ongoing series of formal climate conferences.  

Eilish and Baird also teamed up with Reverb, a non-profit consultancy focused on greening concerts and festivals. Reverb’s environmental impact report demonstrates the results that spirited leadership can produce. Eilish’s 2024/2025 tour raised US$13.3 million for climate organizations, delivered 7.7 million plant-based meals (reducing food-related emission by half), and avoided 135,000 single-use water bottles. Since the biggest climate impact of arena shows is the transportation required for tens of thousands of fans, Eilish’s team worked with each venue, Google Maps and local transit to plot the greenest alternatives. Best of all, Reverb says, many venues have turned these new practices into ongoing operations.  

Unlike many climate crusaders, Eilish is bullish about the possibilities for change. “The main message I live by is that things don’t always have to be done the way they’ve always been done.” 

The post The Eilish environmental effect appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Since becoming president, Milei has set his sights on the country’s most valuable untapped resource: copper. With global demand for the critical mineral soaring, Milei sees a golden opportunity. So do global mining giants, like McEwen Copper Inc., owned by Canadian Rob McEwen, which possesses a major copper deposit in the northwestern province of San Juan.  

McEwen is now a central player in the copper rush currently underway in Argentina, one that stands to generate billions of dollars in annual export revenue for the country and to boost the global supply of a mineral that is essential to the energy transition. But while McEwen sees his Los Azules mine as an opportunity to showcase sustainability and best mining practice, many in Argentina see the country’s copper boom as a travesty of environmental justice and are predicting that it will end in bust.  

Opening Argentina’s copper reserves 

Vast deposits of copper are embedded in the Andes Mountains that form Argentina’s spine. It’s the same geological formation that has turned neighbouring Chile into the world’s largest copper producer and one of South America’s most stable economies. But Argentina, which has been mired in debt, financial crises and crippling inflation, has left most of its copper in the ground: exports dropped to nil in 2018 and have remained there ever since. 

Copper mining in Argentina has been hindered by political and economic instability, but also a unique piece of legislation. When it was enacted in 2010, the National Glacier Protection Law (Minimum Standards for the Preservation of Glaciers and the Periglacial Environmental Law in full) was considered a groundbreaking piece of environmental legislation. Declaring Argentina’s glaciers and periglacial zones – frozen grounds that often are saturated with subsurface ice – to be vital water reserves and therefore public assets, it made them subject to special protection. The law prioritized water security above all else: a compelling position in an increasingly drought-prone country that depends heavily on agriculture.  

In April, Argentina’s Congress voted to reform the law, downloading responsibility for glaciers and periglacial areas onto the country’s 24 provinces. Now it falls to provincial governments, rather than a federal scientific body – Argentina’s Institute for Snow, Ice and Environmental Sciences – to determine if an area is hydrologically “relevant.” Argentina’s mineral-rich provinces welcomed the change. But many Argentinians did not.  

“Now we have a crisis of representation,” says Juan Pablo Milana, a professor of geological science at the Universidad Nacional de San Juan, located in the capital city of San Juan province. “Congress is not representing the people. This law will not last for very long.”  

Save the glaciers 

Opposition to the legislative change was vocal and swift. By the end of April, two provinces – Santa Cruz and La Pampa – had filed injunctions to block its implementation, and three national organizations – Greenpeace, the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers, and the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation – had banded together to declare the reform unconstitutional, gathering nearly a million signatures in support. 

Milana has served as a consultant on copper mining projects in Chile and has seen many turned down in the name of glacier protection. While Chile doesn’t rely on federal legislation, Milana says the non-profits that regulate water use are rigorous in their environmental assessments.  That rigour, he insists, is necessary. “If a country allows miners to destroy glaciers, they will,” Milana says, citing Canadian-owned Centerra’s Kumtor gold mine in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan as evidence. “Miners go for minerals. They don’t care what is beside, below or above them. They have no conscience.”  

A history of harms 

The mining industry’s poor reputation in Argentina can be attributed in large part to Toronto-based Barrick Mining Corp. Multiple cyanide spills at its Veladero gold mine in San Juan led to a suspension of operations in 2016, and its Pascua-Lama mine, which straddles the Chilean border, was fined repeatedly for environmental violations before being forced to close by Chilean authorities. Barrick has also led the mining industry’s charge against the National Glacier Protection Law; in 2019, Argentina’s Supreme Court dismissed Barrick’s claim that the legislation was unconstitutional.   

But now that the law has been softened, there is little to stop the 76 copper mining projects currently registered in Argentina from entering full gear. McEwen’s Los Azules property is one of the largest and most advanced of the crop. According to a feasibility study that was completed last October, the deposit, located in a remote mountain bowl at 3,500 metres elevation, could produce some 327 million pounds of copper cathode a year, with an after-tax “net present value” – a projection of total cash flow from the mine minus taxes and royalties – estimated at US$2.9 billion. But McEwen says this mine is as much about rebranding mining in Argentina, and the world, as it is about digging for copper. The driving question, he says over the phone from his Toronto office, is “How do we make a mine that will change the public’s perception of mining?”

McEwen’s status as a mining magnate is well established. His many successful ventures in gold mining earned him a spot in the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in 2017. Two years later, his company Goldcorp, which he founded in 1983, sold to Newmont Mining in a deal valued at US$10 billion.  

McEwen’s also known to be something of a maverick. In 2000, he turned convention on its head when he solicited public input on an underperforming gold mine he had purchased near Thunder Bay, Ontario. Rather than jealously guarding the Red Lake mine’s geological data – as is standard practice – he published it online and offered sizable cash prizes for the best exploration suggestions. More than a thousand submissions came in: input that resulted in a 10-fold increase in the mine’s yield. It was crowdsourcing before its time. 

A different kind of mine 

Now McEwen wants to roll the dice in a different way. Even though an Argentine environmental non-profit has challenged the Los Azules project in the past for contravening the National Glacier Protection Law, McEwen is confident that the operation will affect no glaciers. More, he wants the project to be a model of sustainability. Opting for heap leaching – an extraction technology that uses considerably less water and energy than conventional copper processing – McEwen says the mine will produce no tailings and be powered by exclusively renewable energy. He has engaged prominent Sudbury-born architect Jason McLennan “to put some beauty on the landscape”: renderings for the workers’ accommodation show a futuristic terraced structure three football fields long, full of hanging gardens and encased in glass. McEwen is even considering putting in a hotel “to enhance transparency of the business.”  

And then there is copper’s end use. As the best conductor of all non-precious metals, the mineral is critical to electrification: a core component of wind turbines, solar panels and EV batteries. The International Energy Agency projects a 30% increase in demand by 2040, and its chief executive officer, Fatih Birol, has warned that shortfalls in supply could slow down the energy transition.  

“The world has woken up to the fact that minerals are needed to support modern society,” McEwen says. “All those things we didn’t want in our own backyard – now someone else has built them. Now places like China have a chokehold on supply.” 

But the argument leaves some in Argentina cold. For Leandro Gómez, investments and rights program coordinator for the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation – one of the three organizations contesting the reform to the National Glacier Protection Law – the explosion of copper mining in Argentina is a sad case of self-interested politics trumping environmental rights, and an example of local communities losing out in the race to decarbonize. “The current model of the energy transition does not include the interests of the Global South,” he says from Buenos Aires.  

Meanwhile, McEwen expects construction in Los Azules to begin next year and the first copper to be in production by 2030. 

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.  

The post A captain of mining tries to rehabilitate the industry appeared first on Corporate Knights.