In early May, the Prime Minister unveiled a new “bridge loan” program to support large businesses recovering from a pandemic economy. Among the conditions, companies must demonstrate how they will contribute to federal climate targets for decarbonization. By encouraging carbon offsetting in the plan, Canada has an opportunity to further reconciliation with Coastal First Nations and ensure our economies are not left behind in the recovery plan.

The Great Bear Rainforest Carbon Project – led by nine coastal First Nations – is the world’s largest forest carbon initiative. Vast amounts of carbon are stored by old growth trees in the Great Bear Rainforest on the North and Central Pacific Coast and Haida Gwaii. The forests here represent one quarter of the world’s remaining coastal temperate rainforests. As coastal people, who have lived here for 14,000 years, we know that keeping ocean and forest ecosystems healthy is the key to preserving our way of life.

To create a sustainable economy, coastal First Nations looked beyond the destructive resource extraction model common to our coast 20 years ago. In 2000, the Coastal First Nations began working with BC on land use planning. A landmark 2006 agreement lead to the protection of the Great Bear Rainforest, making 85% of the rainforest off-limits to industrial logging. Then in 2009, when the two Parties signed the Reconciliation Protocol, it allowed for the validation and sales of carbon credits. ​

Corporations looking to take steps to meet their emission reduction targets can invest in protecting that rainforest with Great Bear Carbon Credits. All revenue from offset sales goes directly back into First Nations stewardship of our lands and waters, and supports projects to ensure traditional governance and community well-being.

Building off land use agreements, this carbon sequestration funding model also contributes to the adjacent coastal and marine areas.  The carbon offsets support the innovative funding model of the Marine Planning Partnership for the North Pacific Coast (MaPP), globally recognized as the gold-standard for collaborative marine use planning. MaPP undertakes marine ecosystem-based management with 17 First Nations and British Columbia.

Carbon offset sales support Coastal Guardian Watchmen who are highly-trained and experienced guardians of land, water, wildlife and cultural sites. In Kitasoo/Xais’xais territory on the Central Coast, Guardian Watchmen have led monitoring of world-renowned grizzly bear habitat and eradicated illegal hunting.

With dwindling government resources for science research, the carbon finance model has helped First Nations stewardship offices undertake some of the most advanced –and in some places, the only – species monitoring and wildlife data collection on the BC coast. As well, climate change research and planning by communities is taking place. This is science that benefits all Canadians. In Heiltsuk territory, offset funds provide core funding for advanced scientific research on crab, rock cod and invasive species to inform a sustainable approach to Indigenous fisheries management. Offset revenue also finances stewardship activities to monitor at-risk whales and Pacific salmon species in Haida Gwaii.

Carbon financing also offers a source of long-term funding for communities to explore meaningful opportunities for renewable energy projects on a diesel-dependent coast, sustainable shellfish aquaculture, ecotourism and non-timber forest product ventures.

The Great Bear Rainforest Agreements have put in place a world-leading model of ecosystem-based forestry management: 85% of our coastal temperate rainforest is set aside for protection and is now permanently off-limits to industrial logging.

Towering old-growth trees that reach up to 1,000 years in age can still be found in our territories. Our streams and rivers sustain 20% of the world’s wild salmon. Rainforest, ocean estuaries, fjords and islands support remarkable biological diversity – including iconic species such as grizzlies, Spirit bears and black bears, coastal Pacific wolves, humpback and killer whales and six million migratory birds.

The Great Bear Forest Carbon Project offers Canadian businesses and governments the chance to build back better in the wake of COVID-19 by working with Coastal First Nations to protect the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest right here on our Pacific Coast.  In the effort to regain lost economic momentum during the pandemic, buying Great Bear credits is an opportunity to invest in a conservation economy that balances ecological integrity with human well-being.

As the country works to revitalize the national economy and meet its 2050 climate goals, Canada must ensure First Nations economies are not left behind and build the new normal together. The federal government has the opportunity to support investment in sustainable jobs in our communities and protect climate resiliency by conserving one of the world’s largest carbon storage rainforests for future generations.​

Chief Marilyn Slett is president of the Coastal First Nations.

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It’s time for a new story, one where Indigenous people assume their rightful place at the economic table of this country.

Why Indigenomics? The truths of this country lie in the experience of Indigenous communities in poverty without access to clean water, warm housing, clean power or good jobs. The root of this can be traced to centuries of being excluded economically.

Dara Kelly notes in her paper Indigenous Development, Wealth, Freedom and Capabilities: “Situating Indigenous economic freedom within a framework of humanism affirms not only the rights of Indigenous peoples to define our own economic futures, but in exchange for economic autonomy, contracts a mutual responsibility to care for, and not violate the rights of others to economic freedom.” This is the next-level Canada. This is Indigenomics.

Through the formation of Canada, Indigenous peoples have gone through four economic stages:

1. Disruption: The first is characterized by the systemic disruption of existing Indigenous economic systems, ways of being and removal from the land while severing inherent authority and responsibility to place.

2. Entanglement: This second stage is characterized by the complexity of the entanglement of the Indigenous relationship firmly embedded within conflict stemming from the disruption.

3. Emergence: The third is characterized by the emergence of the Indigenous legal environment. With over 250 cases won to date, these cases have shaped the economic space for the growth of Indigenous business.

4. Empowerment: Today, Canada is in the fourth stage, characterized by the rise of Indigenous economic empowerment. As an effect of the shifting Indigenous Aboriginal rights and title legal environment, economic equality and inclusion now shape the rise of Indigenous economic empowerment today.

A fundamental question that shaped this country was, how do we eliminate the Indian problem? It is a question that has penetrated the consciousness of generations of Canadians allowing the perception of Indigenous peoples as a problem or a burden. This question begs for relevance as the Canadian courts continuously validate Indigenous rights through the acknowledgement of our place in modernity and the requirement for economic inclusion today.

Questions are the architecture for tomorrow; the quality of questions we ask drives the results. The question of today is, how do we collectively facilitate the development of Canada’s $100 billion Indigenous economy? In the words of Canada’s greatest hockey player, Wayne Gretzky: “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.” This is how the Indigenomics Institute is working to develop the emerging Indigenous economy.

This new story of Indigenous peoples can be seen through the joint work of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business and TD Economics, which estimated the annual contribution of the Indigenous economy at over $30 billion in 2016. This figure acts as an initial metric of the growing strength of the Indigenous economy.

The benchmark numbers that frame the growth of the Indigenous economy can be drawn from recent reports:

• An Atlantic region report identified the size of the Indigenous economic impact in that region as $1.2 billion annually.

• A recent Manitoba report puts the Indigenous economic impact in the province at over $9 billion annually.

• An Indigenous Works report based on a research study found that up to 85% of Canadian businesses currently do not engage with Indigenous peoples in any way.

• A National Indigenous Economic Development Board report highlights the potential of an annual $27.7 billion boost to the Canadian economy through better mobilization of the Indigenous workforce.

Framing the future of Canada and the Indigenous relationship can be understood within the concept that we as a country have reached the intersection where the risk of doing nothing outweighs the cost of doing nothing.

Setting the stage for a next-level Canada today means actualizing this growing story of Indigenous economic potential. It must be based on a new understanding that the growth of the Indigenous economy cannot be advanced within existing Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada program and funding approaches. Modern Indigenous economic design is required today, with a strong Indigenous equity ownership, governance, environmental planning and procurement at the heart of any approach.

While Canada was founded on the economic legacy of systemic economic segregation of Indigenous peoples, the pathway forward must be inclusive and purposeful. Indigenous resilience is now expressing out from the margins to the centre of this country’s economic lifeblood.

Indigenomics is a platform for economic reconciliation. Indigenous peoples have existed on the margins of the balance sheet, viewed as a liability. Reconciliation must now occur in the balance sheet of this country. To achieve a $100 billion Indigenous economy requires a shift in how we relate to Indigenous peoples – to see Indigenous peoples as economic powerhouses in our own right.

The $100 billion Indigenous economy is a modern stake in the ground, the marker of a new economic reality on which Canada’s larger economic future now depends.

Carol Anne Hilton is the CEO and founder of the Indigenomics Institute

Also by Carol Anne Hilton: ‘Investing in reconciliation: the role for institutional investors.’

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