But this week, a group of 160 scientists from 23 countries announced that the planet has already reached its first major tipping point: the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs. That’s due primarily to rapidly rising marine temperatures – the seas have absorbed 90% of the excess heat we’ve created – but also the acidification that comes from more atmospheric carbon dioxide interacting with water. (This interferes with corals’ ability to build the protective skeletons that form the complex structure of a reef.) Since the late 1980s, ocean surface warming has quadrupled. Accordingly, in the last half century, half of the world’s live coral cover has disappeared.

“We’re no longer talking about future tipping points – there’s one happening right now,” Steve Smith, a research impact fellow at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute and a co-author of the report, told Grist. “Although our governments are used to planning for incremental, slow change, things do seem to be speeding up.”

The more individual corals perish, the harder it gets for a reef to bounce back, destabilizing it and pushing it into a spiral of die-off. A quarter of all marine species rely on these bustling warm-water ecosystems – which cover some 350,000 square miles – but corals are bleaching as they release the symbiotic algae they need to harvest energy. Since 2023, more than 80% of the world’s reefs have suffered through the most widespread and intense bleaching event on record. Ever-higher acidification makes it even harder for corals to reproduce and then grow back from this kind of disturbance.

Warm-water corals are particularly vulnerable to climate change because they’ve made an evolutionary compromise. Being close to the ocean surface, their symbiotic algae soak up bountiful sunlight to provide energy, meaning they don’t need to rely as much on outside nutrients. But that positioning also means that during marine heat waves, hot water envelops the corals, stressing them to the point where they release their algae, causing bleaching. “This is a tradeoff. They have a balance they have to strike,” said Gordon Zhang, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Reef Solutions group who wasn’t involved in the new report. “If the water doesn’t move much, and it’s a very shallow place, the water just keeps heating up.”

Beyond their critical role in hosting marine life, these reefs provide $9.9 trillion a year in goods and services, like fishing and tourism, supporting the livelihoods of one billion people. They also act like giant barriers for coastal communities, absorbing the impact of storm surges, the walls of water that hurricanes shove ashore: reefs in Mexico, for instance, reduced the damage from 2007’s Hurricane Dean by 43%.

Coral reefs, then, are both ecologically and economically essential, yet civilization is woefully unprepared for them reaching this tipping point – to say nothing of the other looming tipping points, like the retreat of glaciers. “We are now in a new reality, and we can no longer rely on the institutions and policies designed for the old one,” Manjana Milkoreit, who researches global governance at the University of Oslo and co-authored the report, said during a press conference announcing the findings.

For one, nations as a whole are nowhere near ambitious enough in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are putting unprecedented stress on coral reefs and other essential systems. Secondly, certain tipping points could be so catastrophic that governments would struggle to deal with the society-shaking fallout. A change in ocean currents in the Atlantic, for example, would plunge Europe into deep freezes and mess with the monsoon rains that faraway nations need for their crops. And thirdly, these irreversible changes can reinforce and exacerbate other crises – droughts would worsen if the Amazon turns into a savanna, for instance – a very unwelcome kind of synergy.

Basically, humans need to actively prevent tipping points, because there may be no going back once one kicks off. Coral ecosystems can’t recover and stabilize if we keep warming and acidifying the oceans. “The key message here is: Do not assume that we already know what to do, or we’re already doing everything we can,” Milkoreit said. “It’s not just more of the same, or a matter of implementing existing policies – a different approach to governance is needed.”

This article originally appeared in Grist here. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 

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Weeks later, President Donald Trump issued an executive order signalling his administration’s support for seabed mining in both U.S. and international waters, claiming a “core national security and economic interest” in deep-sea resources.

The ISA has yet to make a decision about whether it will allow deep-sea mining or adopt rules to regulate such an industry, and the UN-backed authority is pushing back against the rush to develop the ocean floor. At the close of its latest meeting in July, the ISA launched an official investigation into efforts by deep-sea miners like TMC to circumvent international law.

Deep-sea mining poses profound risks to ocean ecosystems. Prior to the recent ISA assembly meeting in Jamaica, a group of 40 financial institutions representing nearly €4 trillion in assets urged governments to refrain from permitting deep-sea mining until the environmental, social and economic risks are better understood and alternatives have been explored. The statement was coordinated by the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation, whose mission is to reverse nature loss this decade.

Questioning the rationale for seabed mining

Gerard Barron, TMC’s chairman and CEO, has claimed that seabed mining supports the green energy transition, but critics call this greenwashing. The narrative has since shifted toward defense and competition with China.

Also coinciding with the ISA gathering in July, Greenpeace published a new report on the deep-sea mining industry’s efforts to fast-track underwater mineral exploitation, calling the latest push “a lifeline for an industry in crisis” and challenging the national security argument for seabed mining.

“Deep sea mining is not a strategic necessity,” Randy Manner, a retired major general in the U.S. Army, wrote in an introductory letter to the report. “What we are witnessing is not a fact-based response to a military need, but an attempt by private actors to drape a speculative commercial venture in the flag of national defense.”

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In a March 2024 report, the sustainable finance non-profit Planet Tracker found that mining the deep sea would be a financial mistake “due to negative returns on invested capital” given the high operating expenses and liabilities, and that “preserving the planet’s abyssal plains is worth at the very least ten times more than exploiting them.”

TMC has asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States for two exploration licences and one commercial-recovery permit in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean.

“The scale of strip mining proposed in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is unprecedented. The area under consideration is the size of India,” Surangel Whipps Jr., president of the Republic of Palau, said at the ISA assembly. “Is this the legacy we want to leave our children? A lifeless ocean floor stretching across millions of square kilometres, that could have cascading impacts on the entire Pacific ecosystem and beyond?”

Mark Mann is a journalist and editor at Corporate Knights. He is based in Montreal.

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His startup, Rewind, wants to sequester a gigaton of carbon each year — about 10 percent of what climate scientists deem necessary each year to reach net zero by 2050 — in a remarkably simple way. The elevator pitch goes like this: Gather millions of tons of agricultural waste and send it to the bottom of the Black Sea, where it won’t decay. Wilder still, an ancient Greek ship that sank 2,400 years ago helped inspire the idea.

At first glance, the proposal might seem counterintuitive. The carbon that plants absorb from the atmosphere through photosynthesis is released when they decompose (or, alas, are compressed over eons to make fossil fuels). This is where the Black Sea comes in. Unlike most other large bodies of water, it is mostly anoxic, meaning there is precious little oxygen — and almost none at all at depths beyond 300 feet or so. It takes a long time for anything to biodegrade down there, which explains why dozens of intact shipwrecks litter its floor.

After selling his software company to Google in 2019, Amar pondered growing seaweed to sequester carbon, but realized that anything it captured would eventually return to the atmosphere. He put the sequestration idea aside until he met Peter Kroust, a German marine biologist who suggested stashing carbon in the Black Sea — something that occurred to him after cycling along the Danube and seeing tons of agricultural waste headed downriver. “And at that point, it was just like a click,” Amar said with a laugh. After getting initial funding (he wouldn’t say how much), they launched Rewind in Tel Aviv last year.

It’s an intriguing idea, and Rewind, which employs 12 people, just wrapped up a year-long experiment in the Black Sea and the Sea of Galilee (portions of which are anoxic) that suggests it could work. The research team left a bit more than 650 pounds of hardwood submerged in a linen bag at a depth of 820 feet. The material retained 97% of its biomass over the 12 months that followed. “We saw that there is some degradation over the first three months, and then from three months on it stayed mostly consistent,” Amar said. “That’s really great.”

In their control of pine submerged in normal water, the researchers recorded 10 percent degradation in six months. The reduced rate of decay in anoxic water can be attributed to lignin, a key organic polymer, found in the tissue of most plants, that does not break down without oxygen. Amar’s team plans further experiments at depths of 3,200 feet, followed by two deposits to be made more than a mile down.

Similar tests with wheat stalk, corn stover and grapevines revealed varying levels of decay, but Amar said this small amount of degradation won’t be a problem 7,200 feet beneath the surface. “Whatever does break down will stay in the deep Black Sea and will not mix and float back up into shallower layers where it can come in contact with the air,” he said.

According to Amar, carbon dating shows that the deepest parts of the Black Sea haven’t had contact with the air in two millennia, making it an excellent carbon (and methane) sink. The company is confident the science stacks up, but because Rewind hopes to fund the project by selling carbon credits, its process must be vetted by independent experts to ensure it works.

There are several potential pitfalls, the biggest of which is carbon sequestration being difficult to measure. There also is little recourse should something go wrong. “Once you put material in the deep sea, it is almost impossible to get it back again without a huge expense,” said Martin Palmer, a geochemistry professor at the National Oceanography Center in South Hampton, England. “So you need to be 100% confident that the process is safe”

Palmer also notes that although organic matter is better preserved in anoxic environments, it still undergoes degradation that results in some level of methane production. “You would need to be very sure that you would not exceed the methane solubility in the Black Sea waters, or there could be problems,” particularly in an area that is seismically active, Palmer told Grist.

And then there are the logistical challenges, including where to source so much biomass. However, the Black Sea is bordered by six agriculturally productive countries that generate a lot of waste. Much of it is usually burned, or shipped down the Danube and dumped into the sea at depths above the anoxic zone, where it degrades and releases carbon. Given the existing infrastructure for moving all that material, Rewind calculates that the carbon needed to transport it far from shore to dump it at an appropriate depth would amount to no more than 3% of the carbon that could be sequestered. With a volume of more than 131,000 cubic miles, there is plenty of space to do the job.

However, stashing a gigaton of carbon a year will require such large quantities of biomass that it will demand geopolitical coordination. That means convincing politicians, policymakers, and the public. Communicating the idea that his startup isn’t simply dumping waste in the sea — something Amar calls that the “understanding gap” — won’t be easy, especially in such a politically tense region. Rewind remains in the early phases of those discussions with government agencies and officials, but is confident it can sell them on the idea.

“As humanity, we’re a huge intervention to the planet,” he says. “So we’re trying to fix the biggest intervention we’ve made, with a smaller intervention.”

His idea, though perhaps counterintuitive, may not be as crazy as it first sounds.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/article/a-look-inside-the-plan-to-store-carbon-at-the-bottom-of-the-black-sea/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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So why is it that freshwater has been cut out of a sustainable economic model that promotes the responsible use of marine resources – and at a time when such management is more critical than ever? With oceans warming at an alarming rate, and lake and river systems facing increasing climate stress, ensuring that global water systems, both fresh and marine, are protected is one of the most pressing concerns we face.  

And yet, the “blue economy,” as the model has been dubbed, has sidelined freshwater considerations – a massive omission in a country like Canada, with an estimated two million lakes and more than 8,500 named rivers. The Great Lakes, the world’s largest freshwater lake system, alone provide drinking water for more than 40 million people in Canada and the U.S., and directly generate more than 1.5 million jobs and $60 billion in annual wages.   

To date, the blue economy narrative has largely been dominated by the World Bank’s definition of “blue economy” as a “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and jobs, while preserving the health of ocean ecosystems.” 

This oceans-only framing has been far-reaching, influencing conversations at global, national, and regional levels. In Canada, for instance, Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Blue Economy Strategy, currently in development, is framed as an opportunity to harness Canada’s “ocean growth potential.” This includes creating jobs in coastal communities, ensuring that oceans remain healthy, and learning from international successes such as green shipping initiatives in Norway and Denmark and sustainable ocean resource development in Fiji and the Bahamas. 

It is worth noting, however, that a range of definitions exist for “blue economy,” some focused purely on oceans and others taking a broader view that encompasses all water resources. A handful of prominent alternatives to the World Bank’s view include the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN ECA) and the Great Lakes Commission.  

In particular, UN ECA defines “blue economy” as “the sustainable use and conservation of aquatic resources in both marine and freshwater environments. This includes oceans and seas, coastlines and banks, lakes, rivers and groundwater.” 

Policy–makers and business leaders in Canada and around the world must adapt the blue economy model to reflect the reality of their geographies and communities.

Many other international organizations, from the World Economic Forum to the European Union, struggle with the oceans-only framing, instead opting for workarounds such as “ocean and freshwater economy,” “green and blue economy” or “ocean and water tech.” 

The true test of a definition is not in the abstract but in its application and utility. 

How can any definition of “blue economy” that considers the Great Lakes as peripheral effectively serve Canada’s environmental or economic interests? 

Policy–makers and business leaders in Canada and around the world must adapt the blue economy model to reflect the reality of their geographies and communities. We are entering another record-breaking summer of heat and drought, with nearly 25,000 Alberta residents already evacuated due to wildfires and the Spanish government approving an unprecedented €2.2– billion drought-response plan. It is more critical than ever before to ensure that our fragile global water cycle – both fresh and salty – is protected and preserved for future generations. 

Alan Shapiro is principal at sustainability consultancy Shapiro & Company and director of Foresight Canada’s BC Net Zero Innovation Network’s Water Cluster. Elise Coffey is a junior consultant at Shapiro & Company. 

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In the workplace, there is a compelling case to be made that this confluence of economic, environmental and climate volatility may increasingly add up to a decline in employee mental health and, by association, worker productivity. A smoke signal of note: a 2012 report sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation and co-authored by Lise van Susteren, a psychiatrist and trauma expert, stated: “The economic costs of climate change will be high by any measure. But its specific effect on U.S. mental health, societal well-being and productivity will increase current U.S. expenditures on mental health services, adding to our current $300 billion annual burden.”

Rensia Melles is the manager of global solutions at Shepell.fgi, where she develops employee assistance and health and wellness programs used by thousands of organizations around the world. She said company employees are affected directly and indirectly by environmental and climate change. “Direct experience can cause distress. So, too, can indirect experience through media and conversations with people, which may lead to anxiety about the future. There’s also the psychosocial impact related to the conflict between those who see that climatic change is happening and ‘deniers’ who say it’s not happening,” explained Melles.

And if a company is directly contributing, or perceived to be contributing, to the problem?

Take energy giant Enbridge, ranked by Corporate Knights as one of the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations. The company recently took a big hit to its reputation because of toxic oil spills in Alberta, Michigan and now Wisconsin. For example, a British Columbia newspaper reported that a movie audience in the provincial capital of Victoria booed when shown an Enbridge promotional video for its planned 1,000-kilometre Northern Gateway pipeline project. Could reactions like these affect the morale of Enbridge employees, who are witnessing more negative reports about the company in the news media? Do stress and anxiety afflict its workers more than those of an oil company like Cenovus, now seen as an up-and-coming corporate social responsibility leader? Similarly, did morale plunge at BP – and mental health claims rise – after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, or at Exxon Mobil after the company was regularly cited for funding organizations whose raison d’être was to discredit state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed climate science?

“There is no research available at this time that shows a negative correlation between a lack of corporate social responsibility and employee stress,” said Melles. However, research has shown that: “Companies that have a good reputation for corporate social responsibility, including employee care, are more likely to have employees who stay [and] are committed to productivity and to company objectives.”

Much depends on whether or not an employee views her job as a career, rather than as a paycheque, said University of Toronto professor Carolyn Dewa, head of the occupational health program at Ontario’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. “If the worker views her company as a place that is tied to her career, and that she contributes to the success of that company, she is at risk of experiencing more stress when the company is not successful,” said Dewa, noting that negative publicity could fuel this stress, particularly if the employer’s financial viability is at stake, and thus job security.

Keeping employees committed is why some organizations provide what could be termed “guilt offsets” – a way to counter how workers may feel about a given employer, its products and services, or its contributions to economic, environmental or climate crises. Such offsets might include allowing workers to volunteer time for “feel good” programs such as Habitat for Humanity, or community charities.

“Corporate social responsibility has increasingly become a topic in social media and marketing, so it is hard for employees and consumers to … see what a company is really doing,” said Melles. “Habitat for Humanity days have been co-opted into this external marketing and do have a positive effect for individual employees.”

Climate change’s visible environmental impacts include raging wildfires in Colorado and fast-melting ice in the Arctic or Greenland, as witnessed in 2012. But perhaps the most debilitating stressor will be its broader economic impacts – increased food prices, higher insurance premiums, more expensive energy and high adaptation costs. One need only look to Europe to observe how an economic breakdown in the eurozone – marked by high unemployment and austerity programs that target cuts in health and social services – is contributing to a wide range of mental health issues. These include rising suicide rates among the unemployed and a growth in chronic stress owing to job insecurity.

The World Health Organization estimates that since the European economic crisis began in 2007, mental health problems have led to a 3 to 4 per cent drop in the gross national product of EU countries. In Greece, suicide rates rose by 40 per cent in the first half of 2011 compared with the same period in 2010. Today, the need for mental health services has grown so pressing that some medical facilities cannot provide adequate treatment, referral or follow up.

There’s no reason to think North America is immune. In the United States, prior to the 2008 financial crisis, a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health estimated that depression affected 1.3 million adults and cost 86 million days and tens of billions of dollars in lost productivity each year. As the past four years have unfolded – and job insecurity has become a source of constant worry for working Americans – the number of U.S. workers affected by depression and a whole array of mental health issues can only have trended upwards.

Dewa has been watching the trend closely. “I work with a lot of different organizations and companies looking at their disability data,” she said. “There has been a rise in disability-related mental illness over the past 10 years, which is why there’s an interest in programs for improving mental health among the working population.”

A paper co-authored by Doug Smeall, assistant vice-president of health management services at Toronto-based health insurer Sun Life Financial, found that it isn’t uncommon these days to find that mental health issues account for 30 to 40 per cent of a company’s short-term disability claims. “For most companies, the prevalence of mental health conditions is approaching 30 per cent of all long-term disability cases and has been increasing at a rate of approximately 0.5 to 1 per cent per year over the past several years.”

Significant numbers like these explain why many countries are beginning to set occupational health standards for “psychological safety” in the workplace. The question is whether those numbers are poised to rise even faster. An emerging expert consensus points to climate change as an added mental health burden that could multiply the debilitating mental health impacts associated with economic crises. Climate change could end up being the “mother of all stress multipliers,” given its ability to waylay agriculture, drive up food prices, contribute to job insecurity, and spur nations and organizations to compete ruthlessly for scarce resources. But more research is clearly needed.

In the meantime, some organizations are taking pre-emptive actions. Joel Levey and Michelle Levey are clinical psychologists based in Seattle, Washington, who have worked with Intel, NASA, the U.S. Army Green Berets, the Clinton Global Initiative and many others to help leaders and employees develop the psychological skills required to adapt to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity – the four telltale fingerprints of the 21st century. Today, they collaborate with the Google Mindfulness Laboratory, where they teach meditation techniques to help Google employees manage stress, improve working relationships and create breakthrough innovation.

“For leaders, developing employees’ ability to work effectively under the more chaotic and overwhelming circumstances [of economic and climate crisis] is a worthy and noble endeavour,” Joel Levey said. “These people will be the innovators for the new systems, organizations and communities that have the most long-term viability.”

As the toll of the economic crisis on mental health continues to grimly unfold – and the impacts of climate change inexorably weaken societal resilience – the stakes for human civilization grow higher each day.

Leaders who feel in their guts that the mental health of workers may grow worse as jobs become less secure and the climate becomes more unpredictable and inhospitable should address employees’ well-placed concerns and prepare for potential organizational impacts. The C-suite must convince their boards that the adaptability and flexibility needed to sustain business success requires ambitious, innovative, and scalable mental health and wellness programs. And, last but not least, a strong commitment to clean capitalism.

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Loblaws, the Canadian supermarket chain with over 70 stores, announced in June that it is on track to meet its year-end 2013 goal of sourcing 100 per cent of its seafood from sustainable sources. The grocer leads the industry with 73 Marine Stewardship Council-certified wild-caught seafood products, and has introduced its

WiseSource Salmon product line, a company initiative to meet Aquaculture Stewardship Council standards. The Loblaw Sustainable Seafood Policy Initiative was introduced in 2009, and has caused ripples throughout the industry. Leading environmental groups are encouraged with the progress. “Loblaw has developed the most aggressive sustainable seafood commitment in the world,” says Gerald Butts, president and CEO, WWF-Canada. “Through its collaboration within the supply chain, investment in education, and stakeholder and government engagement, Loblaw is driving large-scale transformational change.” Next steps include introducing WiseSource Tilapia into stores, as well as becoming members of the International Fishmeal and Fish Oil Organization (IFFO). This will begin a 100 per cent conversion to sustainable fishmeal and fish oil products that meet the IFFO Responsible Supply standard.

Although it acknowledges the positive steps Loblaws has taken, Greenpeace, in its 2012 list of sustainable seafood supermarkets, penalized the company for continuing to sell salmon farmed in open net pens. This ongoing activity was behind the company’s drop in the rankings to second in Canada, although its overall score did improve. The environmental impact of this practice, which involves breeding salmon in net cages open to the broader coastal ecosystem, has become a topic of fierce debate within aquaculture circles in Canada, as the industry attempts to expand into Nova Scotia. Critics contend that chemicals, nutrients and fish waste end up affecting wild fish habitats, and have called for a ban on the practice. Instead, they have championed closed containment systems, which have been sourced by Canadian supermarket group Overwaitea Food Group since 2010. The Nova Scotia government along with competitors like Sobeys do not believe these systems to be commercially viable at this time. Although Loblaws has stated its preference for closed containment systems, it continues to sell open net pen farmed salmon in its stores, and has refrained from following Overwaitea’s lead.

Zero: Ikea

Ikea, the iconic home furnishing company, continues to face mounting criticism over the continued logging of old-growth forests in the Russian region of Karelia by its wholly owned subsidiary Swedwood. The Global Forest Coalition (GFC), an alliance of NGOs with members in over 40 countries, released a report in May highlighting the widespread clear-cutting of 200- to 600-year-old trees in northern Karelia, along the Finnish border. The 300,000-hectare Swedwood logging concession has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), but is now being called into question by the GFC report. The controversy stems from the FSC, through regulatory loopholes, declining to certify the land as a high value conservation area, which would place the concession off-limits. Although the Swedish company has not refuted the claims, it has emphasized the 17 per cent of Swedwood’s total leasehold in Karelia previously set aside for conservation.

In the Karelia region, years of logging has reduced the size of the old-growth forest by 90 per cent. With other areas of virgin forest in Russia being increasingly logged, such as the Arkhangelsk region, and World Trade Organization membership likely, ecologists such as Alexander Markovsky fear that the environmental damage is just beginning. “In taiga old-growth forests around 25,000 types of species survive. In secondary forests there are far fewer. Old-growth forests also play a climatic role. Carbon is stored in the soil. When logging comes, the soil is disturbed and the carbon escapes.”

The Swedish company, by some estimates, is the third largest consumer of wood after Home Depot and Lowe’s. With 60 per cent of its products containing some form of wood, Ikea has been using the slogan “We Love Wood” for many years, and placing details of its environmental record on the walls of its stores, opening itself up to a greater level of scrutiny in the process. Sustainability improvements have been made over the past decade through improved packaging and transportation policies, and by refining and strengthening IWay, the company’s code of conduct, which specifies environmental and social requirements for sourcing and distributing products. The recent focus on sustainable cotton has been thorough and encouraging. Yet with Ikea using just 16 per cent FSC-certified wood in its manufacturing, which itself is being called into question as sustainable, the sustainable sourcing of wood is certain to remain an ongoing struggle for the resource-intensive company.

Click here to view our complete Heroes & Zeros series.

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Here the food used to come almost solely from the land. Mary Rose’s favourite is fish; her second favourite, moose. These days she won’t eat any meat from the area: “It’s no good anymore. Tastes bad since the factories were built upriver.” Her granddaughter concurs, showing how her grandma would push the plate away after one bite.

The tiny settlement was put on the environmental map when higher-than-normal cancer rates were reported in the community. Physician and local hero Dr. John O’Connor’s medical license was threatened after he spoke out about a particular form of cancer he observed in the community of 1,200 people. Typically affecting only one in 100,000, he had noticed five patients with bile-duct cancer, a type of cancer strongly linked to arsenic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, both byproducts of the upstream oil sands development.

O’Connor’s push for a public inquiry was thwarted by Alberta Health’s conclusion that the cancer scares were exaggerated. They proceeded to file complaints against O’Connor for professional misconduct for raising “undue alarm.” He has since been cleared of charges.

Alarmed by the escalating cancer rates, the three local First Nations who live in Fort Chipewyan decided to call a five-day ‘Keepers of the Water Conference’ in August 2008 so that people could come and see for themselves what is happening. Attended by 18 prominent Canadian and American NGOs, and government representatives from Alberta and the Northwest Territories, the gathering swiftly caught international attention as participants snapped photos of a two-mouthed fish caught in the river nearby.

Chief Alan Adam, the community’s 41-year-old chief from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, spoke at the conference about his concerns over the water and environmental contamination, recognizing that an economic boom upstream “becomes an economic disaster to our way of life.” With the unprecedented expansion of Alberta’s oil sands, economies are booming but not without consequences. Every day the oil sands create 1.8 billion litres of waste deposits that are stored in tailings ponds covering approximately 130 square km of Alberta. Suncor Energy Inc., one of the lead oil sands developers, commissioned its own environmental assessment and found the level of arsenic in local moose meat to be 453 times the acceptable levels.

The people of Fort Chipewyan are not alone in their concern over the rapid growth of the oil sands. According to a poll conducted for Alberta-based Pembina Institute, 71 per cent of Albertans believe new oil sands approvals should be suspended until infrastructure and environmental issues have been addressed.

The people of Fort Chipewyan issued a declaration at the conference: “Our water is polluted and many of our animals are no longer abundant; they are sick and dying. Our youth are going to have a hard time in the future if we do not make dramatic changes today.”

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