But conservation and financial experts say that conditions of the approval are inadequate to protect the Elk Valley in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, where the company’s mining operations have for decades released high levels of the mineral selenium from waste rock into local waterways, harming fish populations and raising human health concerns.

“Teck is walking away from an unprecedented environmental disaster, with a windfall of billions of dollars,” says Casey Brennan, conservation director with the B.C. environmental group Wildsight. He says the company has been let off the hook for this water pollution by the decision last week by Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne to permit the takeover by Glencore. “It’s a pretty sweet win for Teck to be able to get this approval out of the minister like this with some very limited language that has very unclear legal implications.”

Simon Nicholas, steel industry analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (a global network of energy transition analysts), says it will be difficult for the government to hold Glencore accountable for Teck’s environmental record with its plan to transfer control of the mines to a new coal company. “It’s hard to see this as progress given that Glencore’s intention is to spin off its coal operations,” Nicholas says.

The new company – focusing solely on coal production, in contrast with both Teck and Glencore, which are large diversified mining and metals companies – will face big risks as the world moves away from coal-based steel and power production, raising the possibility it could go out of business before the cleanup costs are met. “There ought to be concerns about whether the new entity will be able to afford long-term rehabilitation,” Nicholas says.

Teck is walking away from an unprecedented environmental disaster, with a windfall of billions of dollars.

– Casey Brennan, Wildsight

The federal approval, announced late last Thursday during a week with major summer holidays in Canada and the United States, was the last hurdle for Glencore and Teck to finalize the deal, expected to close July 11.

Under the approval, Glencore has committed to paying $350 million in rehabilitation and closure activities over five years to reduce selenium pollution in the Elk Valley watershed.

Teck has spent $1.4 billion since 2014 and will spend up to $250 million this year on water treatment. It has also posted a reclamation bond of $1.9 billion with the Government of British Columbia to pay for future environmental liabilities.

According to the B.C. government, Teck’s water treatment facilities are removing only a small fraction of the selenium in the Elk River, especially when spring and summer rains wash large amounts of the mineral into waterways from the man-made mountains of waste rock at the company’s open-pit coal mines. This means that despite Teck’s spending more than $1 billion on water treatment, selenium levels remain more than 200 times higher than what’s considered safe for aquatic life.

Cleanup estimated at $6.4 billion

A consultant commissioned by Wildsight (a conservation organization working extensively in B.C.’s interior) recently estimated the cost of cleaning up the pollution at $6.4 billion, which is almost as high as the total value of the takeover deal at US$6.9 billion.

In his statement announcing approval of the deal, Champagne said Glencore will maintain responsibility for payment of any environmental obligations through to 2050, including if the company is sold to another party. “Glencore’s commitment will result in generational assurance of sound environmental stewardship of the asset, regardless of future ownership,” Champagne said.

Glencore released a list of commitments it is making as conditions of the approval, including promises to maintain Canadian office and staff, donate to community organizations, honour existing agreements between Teck and Indigenous Nations, work with local Indigenous Nations, and increase Indigenous benefits.

The company also pledges to cover Elk Valley environmental obligations over the course of its ownership and potentially beyond. Glencore is committing to obtain prior approval from the minister on a mechanism to cover its obligations if the company is sold, or to continue to stand behind such obligations itself until 2050.

But these assurances don’t satisfy Wildsight, which would have preferred to see upfront reclamation bonds posted in addition to the existing $1.9-billion bond to the provincial B.C. government. “We will continue to press for greater levels of bonding, at least three times higher than what the provincial government is pulling out,” Brennan says. “It really is the only assurance at any level that things will be done and managed properly.”

Brennan says that a decision by the International Joint Commission to investigate pollution in the Elk River watershed could create pressure for a faster cleanup. The issue has become a problem for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden because of objections from the Ktunaxa Nation, an Indigenous community on both sides of the border.

Last week’s decision also contains some stringent guidance on foreign takeovers of critical-minerals businesses, but this was unrelated to the Elk Valley takeover since steelmaking coal is not considered a critical mineral under the new federal rules.

The sale of the Elk Valley mines to Glencore will permit Teck to focus on its copper and critical-minerals businesses which are in high demand with the climate transition, as well as buy back US$2 billion of its own shares. “The large majority of its funds from the sale will be used to buy back shares in order to maximize returns to shareholders and will do nothing for local communities and contaminated waters that they’re leaving behind after billion-dollar profits,” Brennan says.

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).

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Jakarta (regional population 33 million) also contends with earthquakes, recording more than 80 in 2023 alone. And since the city was built on swampland, rapid urbanization and groundwater extraction have resulted in parts of the city sinking by up to 20 centimetres a year. Surrounded by coal plants, Jakarta is also one of the world’s most polluted cities, and lung disease is on the rise. 

Clearly, bold action is required to transform Jakarta into a resilient 21st-century city. The authorities’ response? They’re moving out.

In what may be the world’s biggest act of deflection, they’re building a new capital, Nusantara, in a lush, hilly landscape on the island of Borneo, 1,200 kilometres northeast. Yes, the government will invest US$40 billion to slow Jakarta’s sinking, but it will spend US$38 billion on the new capital. It’s been billed as a “low-carbon super hub” – but the plan was reportedly approved in just 42 days, making it the fastest bill ever approved by Indonesia’s parliament.

Also hasty is the timetable for building this new metropolis. Construction began in July 2022, and Nusantara’s inauguration is planned for this August. Critics say the planning process was rushed, with limited consultation and environmental consideration. Local people complain they were never consulted about the project, which has disrupted their lives and livelihoods. An Indigenous Peoples’ alliance estimates that 20,000 Indigenous people face relocation – with scant compensation. Not to mention, roughly 2,500 hectares of rainforest have been cleared to make way for the city, and so far reforestation has been haphazard.

Rather than pointing to a better future, Nusantara reflects “the failure of successive administrations in Jakarta to take on and manage the problems of Jakarta,” Ian Wilson, a lecturer in Indonesian politics at Australia’s Murdoch University, told Time magazine. “The problems of Jakarta will remain, regardless of Nusantara.”

Columbia’s Saputra believes the root of all these problems lies in educating more Indonesians on the perils of climate change. But Jakarta’s problems may equally be a global lesson: you can’t outrun climate change. 

This story is part of our Spring 2024 issue. 

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A recent study shows this problem might be a lot worse than the oil industry has let on. The study, which used aircraft to measure emissions from Alberta’s oil sands industry, found that pollution was actually 1,900% to 6,300% more than previous measurements that, the authors contend, were “severely” underestimated. The study measured chemicals known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), as well as semi-volatile organic compounds, which are both generated through the extraction of bitumen.

“These findings validate what Indigenous communities have been saying for decades: the air is making them sick,” said Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada. “Alongside the oil company’s own workers, who are bearing the initial brunt of these truly astonishing levels of toxic pollution, Indigenous communities are paying the price of turning large chunks of northern Alberta into a sacrifice zone. No one should accept this as inevitable, because it’s not.”

These findings validate what Indigenous communities have been saying for decades: the air is making them sick.

 

– Keith Stewart, Greenpeace Canada

The study, conducted by researchers at Environment and Climate Change Canada and Yale University, found that the methods used by the oil industry to record emission levels failed to account for certain organic compounds. Typically, the oil industry measures its emissions using ground-based methods, but researchers claim that their “top-down” approach is capturing a more holistic picture of what polluters are actually emitting.

“Work over the last 15 years or so has continually shown that there’s more going into the air from the oil sands than is being officially recorded,” Jeffrey Brook, an air quality expert and professor at the University of Toronto, told CBC News.

Researchers collected the data in 2018 from 17 different sites in Alberta’s Athabasca region. The study is the latest investigation to show that emissions are worse than what are being officially reported by Alberta’s oil industry. Last year, a similar study suggested that the oil sands could be spewing 31 million tonnes more of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year than what the industry is reporting.

“You can’t know what you’re missing and how important what you’re missing is until you go out and measure it, and that’s the point of this paper,” John Liggio, a co-author of the recent study, told CBC.

The Pathways Alliance – which includes Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Cenovus Energy, ConocoPhillips Canada, Imperial, MEG Energy and Suncor Energy – has questioned the validity of using aircraft to measure emissions in the past, arguing that its methods follow international standards. But Pathways spokesperson Mark Cameron said that the disparity between the oil industry’s numbers and those in the latest study that analyzed VOCs “warrant further review.”

Stewart said that if the oil industry’s reporting methods have followed the rules, then “the rules need to change.”

“This study has highlighted the urgent need to strictly enforce tough new air pollution regulations, as part of a just transition from an economy based on fossil fuels to one rooted in the wise use of renewable energy,” he said.

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Accelerate reuse and refill markets

Governments and businesses need to collaborate to eliminate unnecessary single-use plastics while developing thriving systems for reusable and refillable products, including deposit-return schemes and new refillable product-delivery models (e.g., modern-day “milkmen” for consumer goods).

Plastic-curbing potential: 30%

Ramp up recycling markets

At least 80% of plastic is landfilled because it costs too much to recycle. Regulators will need to enforce design rules to make plastics more recyclable, and governments should end fossil fuel subsidies for virgin plastic and set mandates for at least 50% recycled content to help level the playing field.

Plastic-curbing potential: 20%

Spur on sustainable alternatives

In cases where reuse isn’t an option, UNEP suggests that corporations carefully replace problematic plastic products with alternative materials, such as recycled paper and certified compostable materials, but only if they’re backed by life-cycle assessments.

Plastic-curbing potential: 17%

Deal with durables

More than 30% of plastic waste comes from “durable plastic” products that last more than three years. To help keep demand for new plastic-based electronics and goods in check (and boost product durability), governments must enable the right to repair and crack down on planned obsolescence.

Stop microplastics at the source

Tiny microplastic particles account for more than 6% of plastic pollution. A ban on intentionally adding microplastics to products is key, but so is redesigning tires, washing machines, polyesters and other textiles so they shed less, preventing microplastic particles from reaching waterways.

Tackle existing plastic pollution

UNEP says that 22% of plastic waste is mismanaged in dump sites, burned in open pits or dumped in the ocean. To help put an end to this, the report calls for a global ban on exporting plastic waste to countries with low collection rates while also building more collection systems in those regions.

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“Sadly, we have taken the ocean for granted, and today we face what I would call an Ocean Emergency,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said at the opening of the conference, which aimed to mobilize science-based solutions to the crisis. “We must turn the tide. A healthy and productive ocean is vital to our shared future.”

Human actions have burdened the ocean and its inhabitants with serious problems, including more acidic and hotter waters from emissions and global warming, which represent existential changes for many ocean-dwelling organisms. Meanwhile overfishing, pollution and industrial activities have depleted and damaged ocean ecosystems. Through these combined threats, we’ve robbed marine communities of their resilience at the very moment they need it most.

Could granting the ocean inalienable rights help turn all of that around — and protect people who depend on the ocean in the process?

A United Ocean

Experts at the conference argued that a declaration of oceanic rights from the United Nations could recognize the ocean as a living entity that has its own inherent entitlements, such as those to life and health, along with the right to continue its vital natural cycles.

Participants included representatives of the Earth Law Center, a Colorado-based nonprofit dedicated to the growing Rights of Nature movement. The organization has spent the past five years spearheading the concept of ocean rights.

In 2017 the center secured support from more than 70 nonprofit organizations in 32 countries for its Ocean Rights Initiative. That year, at the UN’s first ocean conference, then-executive director Darlene Lee explained that the initiative recommended “the United Nations governments, organizations and stakeholders, promote and adopt holistic and rights-based governance of the ocean, including incorporating the inherent rights of the ocean into law and policy.”

There’s historic precedent for establishing far-reaching rights principles through the United Nations. In 1948 the UN passed the groundbreaking Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrined certain rights and freedoms — such as liberty and equality — as basic entitlements of all people across the globe.

Although that declaration of human rights is not legally binding, Earth Law Center oceans campaign director Michelle Bender says it has served as a powerful tool for embedding human-rights principles in laws and policies, including international treaties, national constitutions, and legal codes around the world.

Similarly, this summer the General Assembly adopted a groundbreaking resolution declaring access to a clean and healthy environment as a universal human right. And in 2010 a resolution was passed on the human right to water and sanitation.

Activists hope to extend the notion to the ocean we all share.

The Shift Begins

The effort took a step forward at the UN Ocean Conference, where The Ocean Race — a round-the-world sailing contest that also advocates for a healthy ocean — organized a panel discussion where advocates could discuss ways to advance the declaration and raise awareness of its importance.

Speakers included Prime Minister Ulisses Correia de Silva of the Republic of Cabo Verde, Earth Law Center representative Callie Veelenturf, and Ocean Race chairman Richard Brisius.

Addressing a packed audience, speakers argued that establishing legal rights for the ocean could start a cascade of societal shifts in peoples’ attitudes toward, and understanding of, the ocean. They called on the public to urge their UN ambassadors to support ocean rights and get a declaration on the UN’s agenda.

Although these speeches were given in a dimly lit, hushed venue — one of two adjacent rooms where everyone had to listen through headphones so as not to disturb proceedings next door — the audience was enthusiastic. Many attendees clustered around the speakers as the event came to close, eager to hear more.

Fighting an Anthropocentric Paradigm

Experts and national leaders speaking at the panel, and those I talked to after the event, said the declaration would prioritize the ocean’s interests alongside those of people.

This is a fundamentally different approach from most of today’s ocean-related decision-making, which is typically “anthropocentric in nature,” says marine biologist Guillermo Ortuño Crespo, who attended the event. He’s not involved in the ocean rights initiative, but his research has involved scrutiny of management of the ocean. He says the current approach puts humanity at the center, valuing and protecting the marine environment based on the services it provides to people.

Crespo describes this anthropocentric paradigm as “a limited value system that psychologically removes us from nature.”

Other experts said a declaration of ocean rights could upend that value system by giving the ocean a voice. It would represent, in Bender’s words, “a fundamental shift in our relationship with the ocean.”

Granting the ocean legal rights would be a step toward “a more ecocentric value system,” Crespo says, “which is still upheld by innumerous coastal and Indigenous peoples across the ocean. These communities recognize the intrinsic right that the ocean and its many species and features have to exist and be protected.”

Sailing Toward the Declaration

The UN panel didn’t occur in a vacuum — the Ocean Race is also in the middle of a series of summits, running through 2023, examining ocean rights as a solution to restoring ocean health. The organization has held summits since 2015 to bring together country leaders, industry figures, ocean experts and others to discuss critical marine issues.

Johan Strid, director of Ocean Race Summits, says the race has a “unique and neutral platform to host a dialogue and drive this discussion in a constructive way.”

The summits  and associated workshops, events and “action labs” are components of a strategic program that the Ocean Race, the Earth Law Center, the nonprofit organization Nature’s Rights and other partners ramped up earlier this year.

One major event took place in March in the Italian coastal city of Genova. There the partners started a consultation process to create a draft resolution. The consultation will “gather stakeholders from all backgrounds, regions and expertise to gain feedback on the process, partnership in outreach and raising awareness, as well as drafting of the principles themselves,” says Bender.

Moving forward, a series of workshops will allow consultation participants to analyze the  ideas discussed in the ocean rights summits. The workshops will then feed into a working group that will finalize the resolution.

Go Big or Go Bust

The push for ocean rights resonates with other Rights of Nature efforts, but its scale is particularly ambitious.

“It would apply to the ocean as a whole, including in areas beyond national jurisdiction,” says Bender.

That’s an important distinction, as international waters — those beyond individual countries’ control — are currently “almost completely ungoverned and unprotected,” as the International Institute for Environment and Development highlighted in March. The United Nations is working to address this, with member countries negotiating a legally binding treaty on the conservation and use of the high seas under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

But conventional safeguards for the ocean often exist in silos, piecemeal and poorly enforced. Provisions such as Marine Protected Areas only shield selected parts of the ocean, while frameworks currently under discussion like the UN’s proposed plastic treaty tackle individual issues affecting the marine environment.

Bender commends all these efforts as “great steps forward,” but contends that we also need a whole-ocean approach.

This is essential, she argues, because every impact in the ocean is interconnected: Pollution that originates on land enters the ocean and affects the entire planet. A declaration of ocean rights would provide an opportunity to encompass all ocean governance issues and align related frameworks under one overarching umbrella.

Ocean rights would be based on principles that reconnect humans “to the systems that sustain us,” she says. The application of these principles could help to put the brakes on activities like deep-sea mining, and potentially have ramifications for related issues like CO₂ emissions. Meanwhile, the standards it upholds could be systems-based. For example, recognizing humans as predators could result in efforts to guide fisheries management.

Err on the Side of Nature

As discussions continue, organizers aim to have a draft resolution ready to present to the United Nations in September 2023.

Bender says deliberations so far have addressed principles such as intergenerational equity, connectivity and reciprocal responsibility.

Another principle in discussion boils down to “when in doubt, favor the ocean.”

This is similar to the in dubio pro natura standard adopted in Panama and elsewhere, which translates to “when in doubt, err on the side of nature.”

Strid says the resolution would be the starting point for a process within the United Nations itself, assuming the international body agrees on the concept in the first place. Even if that happens, he says, getting “all states in the world to agree on a matter takes time.” They hope that can be accomplished by 2030.

Strid accepts that the timeline is “highly ambitious,” but history shows it’s not impossible. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights took around two years from initial introduction to adoption.

The endeavor has some wind in its sails already, with committed support from the nations of Cabo Verde, the Seychelles and Panama, along with the city of Genova.

In the panel discussion, former Seychelles’ president Danny Faure argued that the support of nations like theirs — known as Big Ocean or Small Island Developing States — is important if ocean rights are to be achieved.

Strid agrees. “Small island states are significantly impacted by the issues concerning the ocean,” he says. Their participation, he adds, can raise awareness of these devastating effects.

Public support will also prove essential. The Ocean Race has launched a campaign called One Blue Voice through which people around the world can sign on to a petition that organizers will present to the United Nations.

Gathering Momentum

Strid stresses that “we are in the early stages of the work.” As the process of shaping the resolution develops, they will focus efforts on gathering formal support from relevant organizations and policymakers.

Despite the immensity of the challenge ahead, both Bender and Strid say they remain hopeful.

“The nature of our sport is to overcome the impossible,” Strid says.

Bender, meanwhile, finds optimism in the successes of the rights of nature movement and the fact that ocean rights have been featured for the first time this year at the Blue Climate Summit and other events. She sees all this as essential momentum that will eventually achieve planetary support for nature and the people who rely on it.

“Humankind is a part of nature, and we cannot realize human rights without a healthy environment to support them,” she says.

This story was produced as part of the 2022 UN Ocean Conference Fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch). This story also originally appeared in The Revelator and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

The post Should the ocean have the same rights as people? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

I’d like to thank Corporate Knights for providing a public forum to examine issues surrounding pollution pricing in Canada, particularly as it relates to major industrial emitters. For too long, Canada delayed pollution pricing across the economy using the rationale that it would put us at a competitive disadvantage to our trading partners. This effectively gave a veto on climate action to the slowest movers.

No more. Since 2019, the Government of Canada has implemented a price on pollution that entrenches the polluter pay principle while ensuring industry does not relocate to jurisdictions with weaker environmental regulations. These two imperatives – polluter pays, and a level playing field that protects Canadian jobs – are at the heart of the regulations that make up the federal Output-Based Pricing System and the minimum criteria we have set for similar provincial and territorial systems.

The average price per tonne of emissions, which headlines your assessment, misses the point of the exercise. 

Under the federal Output-Based Pricing System, every tonne of carbon reduced by an industrial facility is worth the full carbon price, or close to it – currently $50 per tonne. Facilities that are more efficient than the industry average earn the carbon price in saleable credits for every new tonne of reduction, while less efficient facilities pay the full price for every extra tonne. That means the worst emitters have the biggest incentive to reduce the amount they pollute during production. All revenues remain in the province where they were collected and are re-invested into technologies that achieve greater emissions reductions from the same industries. And businesses stay competitive as opposed to simply pushing to jurisdictions without environmental regulation. 

The key to this system is predictability and consistency over time. Having established the benchmark price that we consistently enforce, we are providing industry and investor certainty with a very public reassessment of pricing out to 2030.  Updated criteria that provincial systems must meet (the benchmark) for 2023-2030 were published on August 5, 2021. A public consultation period on proposals to strengthen the federal Output-Based Pricing System ends January 24, and proposed regulations will be published in the first half of this year, with final regulations coming into force next January. 

The updated benchmark criteria are designed to ensure that carbon pricing drives significant reductions throughout the economy and will require both broader coverage of greenhouse gas emissions and an escalating minimum price through 2030. New rules for industrial systems will make sure that the carbon price gives a strong incentive to all of their emissions.

As the International Energy Agency stated this month in its 2022 five-year assessment of Canada:  “The proposed carbon pricing trajectory is undoubtedly one of the most ambitious in the world.”

It is also important to note that the pricing system not only incentivizes technological innovation up to $170 per tonne by 2030, but will be complemented by other investments and measures designed to encourage innovation, including the Clean Fuel Regulations and tax incentives for CCUS. 

As the authoritative IEA report states, “Since the IEA’s last in-depth review in 2015, Canada has made a series of international and domestic commitments, putting it on a path toward achieving an ambitious energy system transformation and climate transition by 2050.”

I welcome the thoughtful examination of Canada’s pollution pricing systems, as predictable, steady improvement will be the key to reducing emissions while growing a healthy, innovative and sustainable economy.

Steven Guilbeault is the Canadian minister of environment and climate change. 

The post Letter to the editor: There’s more to the carbon pricing story appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“You meet nobody; you’re in total wilderness, surrounded by boreal forest,” says Pier-Olivier Boudreault, a conservation director for the Société pour la nature et les parcs (SNAP), the Quebec arm of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS).

These pristine waters, also known by the Indigenous name Muteshekau-shipu, came under threat several years ago when Hydro-Québec included the river in a strategic plan for a hydroelectric dam project. Alarmed conservationists, whitewater rafters, a Côte-Nord municipality and a First Nation band formed the Muteshekau-shipu Alliance in 2018 to oppose the project. The coalition included the Indigenous Ekuanitshit Innu Council, the Minganie regional county municipality, Association Eaux-Vives Minganie and SNAP. “We had a common goal of protecting the river,” says Boudreault.

Initially, the Muteshekau-shipu Alliance tried to create a protected area under provincial law, an initiative strongly opposed by the provincial government and Hydro-Québec. Inspired by an international Indigenous-led movement that supports the rights of nature, the alliance instead sought “personhood” for the Magpie. Montreal-based International Observatory on the Rights of Nature (IORN) drafted nine rights for the river, including the right to flow and be safe from pollution. In what was a first for Canada, early this year the Ekuanitshit Innu Council and the Minganie regional county municipality granted personhood to the river, which joined a small but growing list of rivers and wild spaces globally that have been granted the same fundamental right to exist that a human has. This time, there was no opposition from the province or Hydro-Québec.

Under common law, which is practised in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, personhood means that an entity has rights ascribed to it. Corporations and churches have personhood. Everything else – animals and ecosystems – are considered “things” that, similar to property, can be owned and exploited. “The rights-of-nature movement is a paradigm shift,” says Boudreault. “Nature has a reason to live.”

Along with personhood comes the granting of legal guardians who uphold the rights of the river and can sue for damages on its behalf, should the need arise. This is crucial, says Boudreault, as Hydro-Québec may want to revisit its original plan to dam the river.

Bolstered by the Magpie achievement, environmental advocates have turned their sights on a much larger waterway, the 1,200-kilometre-long St. Lawrence River.

[Securing personhood rights for rivers] is the best way to ensure a healthy environment for present and future generations.
—Yenny Vega Cárdenas, IORN president and lawyer

The river flows from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic, crossing two provincial, as well as the Canada-U.S., borders. Two years ago, IORN helped create the Saint Lawrence River alliance, which includes conservation groups, some Quebec municipalities and more than 10 Indigenous groups whose traditional territories touch upon the vast waterway. Attaining personhood will be more complex for the St. Lawrence than the Magpie; the river is highly industrialized and comes under provincial and federal jurisdiction. Undeterred, the alliance will table the motion with Quebec’s provincial legislative body in 2022. Advocates plan to support their claim by including legal precedents from jurisdictions around the globe like Ecuador, Colombia and New Zealand. (See sidebar on pages 30/31.) The pursuit of the St. Lawrence’s personhood received the backing of the federal New Democratic Party during the federal election campaign in September.

IORN president and lawyer Yenny Vega Cárdenas says a key objective of the personhood initiative is “starting a conversation” with industry and agriculture. Agriculture and corporate activities have devastated parts of the St. Lawrence, home to beluga whales, otters, multitudes of fish species, and migratory birds like snow geese. The river is afflicted by suffocating algae blooms linked to agricultural runoff and high levels of restricted pesticides such as neonicotinoids. Chemical pollutants from oil and gas drilling and hydraulic fracking that occur close to the river also affect water quality and are toxic to wildlife. Personhood would give the river fundamental rights, pressure industry and agriculture to stop polluting, and compel municipalities to improve water treatment facilities, Cárdenas says. “It’s the best way to ensure a healthy environment for present and future generations.”

Constitutional change needed

Mumta Ito is one of the EU’s leading advocates for codifying nature’s rights into law. Ito, a Scotland-based lawyer who founded the charity Nature’s Rights, warns that the Magpie River’s personhood status doesn’t protect it from a legal court challenge down the road by powerful economic or political forces. Ito emphasizes that, in order for nature to be considered equal to humans and corporations in the courts, rights must be embedded at the highest level, such as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Other countries, such as Ecuador and Bolivia, prioritized the rights of nature over economic development in their constitutions in 2008 and 2009 respectively. In 2019, Bangladesh’s highest court granted every river in the country legal personhood, so that anyone damaging a waterway can be tried as if they have harmed a living entity.

The Bangladesh NGO Human Rights and Peace was consequently appointed guardian of all national rivers. The effect of the legislation has been imperfect, with politicians and businesses reportedly flouting riverside eviction notices. However, there have been successes, with the court ordering the closure of 231 unauthorized factories on the Buriganga River last year, according to the Rights of Rivers, a global survey of the rapidly developing Rights of Nature jurisprudence pertaining to rivers.

Currently, environmental law doesn’t challenge “the way our societal systems operate,” says Ito, who co-authored a 2020 study, Towards an EU Charter of the Fundamental Charter for the Rights of Nature, commissioned by the EU’s European Economic and Social Committee. The study proposes a restructuring of law to enshrine nature as a rights-bearing subject equal to humans and corporations – which is, on paper at least, a guiding principle for EU nations, none of whom, to date, have granted personhood to rivers. (An initiative is underway to grant personhood to Spain’s Mar Menor, one of Europe’s largest seawater lagoons, which was devastated in 2016 by agricultural discharge that sparked an algae bloom and killed off tens of thousands of fish.)

A judicial shift would have significant implications for corporations. Companies, such as those peddling tobacco and opioids, have already been found legally responsible for the harm their products cause. Globally, the Stop Ecocide Foundation is seeking to protect nature’s rights even further by pushing the International Criminal Court in The Hague to adopt “ecocide” – an act causing severe or long-term damage to the environment – as a prosecutable crime on par with war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression. Corporations would be found legally responsible for such things as deforestation and oil spills.

It’s seeing things that are not human as [having] equal stature from a moral perspective.
—Ian Moore, Mack Law Corp.

If rivers have rights, what are the potential ramifications for industry and infrastructure projects that interfere with waterways? Governments see hydroelectric dams as a way to generate clean renewable energy. But environmental advocates and First Nations communities don’t necessarily agree. For example, British Columbia’s Peace River is the contentious site of the Site C Dam, the $16-billion hydroelectric megaproject set for completion in 2025. Federal and provincial scientists report that the dam, spearheaded by BC Hydro, a Crown corporation, will destroy the habitat of dozens of species of insects, mammals and plants, many on the brink of extinction. Colorado-based environmental lawyer Grant Wilson, founder of the Earth Law Center, says Site C is a “clear violation of the rights of the Peace River, in addition to many Indigenous rights violations.”

Wilson’s Earth Law Center advises groups around the world that seek to establish legal rights for waterways. This year, the non-profit co-developed the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Rivers. Signed by nearly 200 organizations to date, the declaration serves as a legal template for anyone wanting to adopt the rights of rivers, Wilson says. The centre is poised to release a legal toolkit customized for B.C. that Wilson hopes will be helpful to those groups fighting the ongoing construction of the Site C dam. The toolkit incorporates a largely untested but powerful legal document: the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which was enshrined into B.C. law in 2019.

Vancouver lawyer Ian Moore, an associate counsel at Mack Law Corp., an Indigenous-owned firm that works primarily with First Nations but represents Inuit and Métis groups as well, contributed to the B.C. toolkit. Moore says that a number of B.C. First Nations will be using the toolkit as they seek to emulate the Magpie River’s designation of personhood.

One B.C. First Nation has formally aligned itself with the concept of personhood for rivers. In 2020, Tilhqot’in First Nation released a document establishing Sturgeon River Law. (The Fraser River, also known as the Sturgeon River, supports trout, salmon, whitefish and sturgeon.) The Tilhqot’in refer to water as tu, declaring that it is “a life form, it has its own spirit with human qualities.” The document also sets out the responsibilities of the Tilhqot’in regarding tu, stating that the community is a steward for future generations and must ensure the river is kept clean. If it is degraded, they must take corrective steps to restore ecosystem health. “These relationships define us as a Nation and highlight our protection and stewardship responsibilities that are grounded in our inherent and self-government rights,” the document states.

Congested, constricted and polluted waterways also impact the rights of other wildlife. Industry, dams and urbanization along the lower Fraser River floodplains – critical to Pacific coho and Chinook salmon – have resulted in the loss of 85% of spawning grounds, a recent report by University of British Columbia researchers and the Raincoast Conservation Foundation revealed. Such spawning-grounds loss has a deleterious effect on wildlife higher up the food chain, including the endangered Southern Resident orca population. A coalition formed by Earth Law Center is working to advance a proposed bill before the Washington State Legislature to recognize the rights of the Southern Resident orcas and the ecosystems upon which they depend, including the Salish Sea ecosystem, which spans the shores of Washington through to B.C.

The right to sue

Given the calamities that industrialization and corporations have inflicted upon the environment, how important is a river’s right to sue, should it attain personhood? Moore emphasizes that the primary value in recognizing legal personhood isn’t the ability of non-humans to sue but rather the opportunity to restructure our relationships with nature. “It’s seeing things that are not human as [having] equal stature from a moral perspective. It’s about relationship-shifting,” he says.

Precedence exists, however, with Ecuador’s Vilcabamba River, which, acting as a plaintiff alongside two property owners, stopped a damaging road construction project in 2011 by filing a constitutional injunction. The Rights of Rivers notes that, despite a raft of remedial and rehabilitation orders, the polluter ignored the directive.

Wilson hopes that establishing parameters and standards of operation will allow businesses to become partners in protecting the planet. “Companies like predictability,” he notes. The ultimate aim: a revolution that sees corporations, the public and Indigenous groups collaborating and working toward a common goal of respecting nature. Within this new zeitgeist, much ground needs to be made up. Wilson is optimistic, noting that even a river that is completely dead – as many are throughout the world – can be revitalized.

“Nature has an amazing capacity to restore itself to health when given the opportunity.”

Court Victories From Around the Globe

Ecuador & Bolivia
In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to create a constitution that recognizes the right of nature to exist and regenerate. Bolivia followed in 2010 with a Rights of Mother Earth Law.

United States
Last year, Orange County, Florida, granted legal rights to all waterways, including two rivers. It is but one of several American jurisdictions to enact rights-of-nature laws, beginning in 2006 with the borough of Tamaqua in Pennsylvania, which declared toxic sewage dumping to be a violation of the rights of nature.

New Zealand
In 2017, a treaty agreement between New Zealand’s parliament and a Maori tribe declared the Whanganui River a “legal entity,” along with a former national park, Te Urewera, and Mount Taranaki. That same year, India’s Ganges and Yamuna rivers were declared legal persons, a decision later overturned by the Supreme Court, as it was declared unsustainable at law.

Colombia
In 2018, 25 plaintiffs aged seven to 26 successfully sued the Colombian government in that country’s highest court for failing to protect the Amazon, claiming that deforestation violated their constitutional right to life and a healthy environment. As a result, the court granted the Amazon River ecosystem the same legal rights as a human being.

Roberta Staley is a Vancouver-based author, magazine editor, writer and documentary filmmaker.

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Lots of firms engage in it; rarely are they punished. A recent exception was Under Armour, the American sports equipment manufacturer that recently settled an enforcement action with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

Earnings management may be a form of financial fraud, but there are plenty of defenders who say accounting standards allow for managerial discretion in reporting earnings. Besides, when firms manipulate their books, aren’t they hurting themselves more than anyone else?

It’s this seeming lack of an identifiable victim that has led many accounting professionals and researchers to conclude that it’s no big deal. New research, however, reveals a darker story.

Two recent studies show how a company’s obsession in meeting earnings expectations can victimize vulnerable employees. One documented higher workplace injury and illness rates in firms that meet or just beat analyst forecasts – the result of increases in employee workloads and out-of-the-ordinary reductions of discretionary expenses. A second study connected earnings management to corporate wage theft, which happens when firms fail to pay employees for overtime or force them to under-report the number of hours worked.

Increase in air pollution

A new study we conducted with Hongtao Shen and Yang Zhao, of Jinan University in China, and Zheng Liu, a doctoral student at Smith School of Business at Queen’s University, showed an even wider fallout from earnings management – an increase in air pollution, with long-term health consequences.

We based our study on a hunch that pollution reduction costs would be a prime target for struggling firms feeling pressure to meet earnings targets. Most emission reduction expenditures are variable costs that can be reduced by switching off abatement technology, such as sulphur dioxide scrubbers, and switching them to full power when inspections are imminent.

A man wearing a mask for protection against air pollution walks in Beijing as the capital of China is shrouded by heavy smog in 2016. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

From the perspective of a company looking for a quick fix, cutting pollution abatement expenses is often a better alternative than cutting research and development or advertising, which could damage its mid- or long-term interests. By switching off the scrubbers, the firm passes on the long-term costs of a dirtier environment to the community where it operates.

We focused our study on a selection of publicly traded manufacturers in China, where there have been a variety of efforts to control sulphur dioxide emissions that cause acid rain and air pollution.

To identify those firms feeling pressured to engage in earnings management, we turned to previous research that showed companies just meeting or exceeding analyst forecasts as prime suspects for engaging in accounting manipulation.

When we analyzed the data, they told a convincing story. Manufacturers that just met or beat analyst earnings forecasts had higher-intensity sulphur dioxide emissions – they released, on average, 0.26 kilograms more sulphur dioxide per 1,000 CNY (Chinese yuan renminbi) of output, almost 27% higher than the average for emission-releasing establishments.

Regulations were weak

This unethical corporate behaviour was most evident when environmental regulation and monitoring were weak. In China, the environmental regulator is a local agency dependent on local government, which in turn depends on tax revenue from companies in its jurisdiction. The study revealed that suspect firms that were key contributors to the local economy emitted more sulphur dioxide. The same held true for state-owned enterprises aligned with the central government and protected from environmental monitoring and enforcement.

The opposite was also true – companies were less likely to surreptitiously cut back on their abatement expenses when monitoring was tight and regulations were enforced.

This was evident among firms located in designated acid-rain control zones and in cities that hosted events like the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics – occasions when China increased environmental monitoring in order to polish its image on the world stage. This was also evident among firms mandated to disclose data relating to corporate social responsibility.

Fireworks explode over the National Stadium during the opening ceremony for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

Our findings and those of other studies carry a message for directors of public companies who oversee their firms’ financial reporting. Research shows that companies with more long-term-oriented investors and CEOs with incentives that reward a longer-term perspective are less likely to engage in any sort of financial sleight of hand. To some extent, that means earnings management can be mitigated by people management.

It’s time that the accounting profession, researchers and capital market regulators take earnings management more seriously. We need to know what companies are doing just to find a few pennies of earnings per share to meet quarterly or annual targets – and who ends up paying for such practices.

Michael Welker is a professor of financial accounting and Ning Zhang is an associate professor of financial accounting at Queen’s University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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Their experience shows that big problems like climate change cannot be solved in isolation—and sometimes, the most meaningful solutions come from the most unlikely alliances.

When it comes to climate change, methane gas does not get the same attention as carbon dioxide. Yet, pound-for-pound, it is 120 times more potent than carbon dioxide because of how effectively it absorbs heat, says the EDF website.

To map gas leaks from the pipes that run beneath streets and sidewalks, three Google Street View cars were equipped with new methane-sensing and analytical technology to measure concentration, GPS locations, and wind direction and speed as they drove through Boston, MA, Indianapolis, IN and Staten Island, NY.

The maps show how much these low-priority risks add up and how important it is to upgrade infrastructure.

In Boston, where more than half of the natural gas pipes are over 50 years old and are made of leak-prone materials, such as cast iron, there was an average of one leak for every mile driven. In Indianapolis, where pipes are newer and made from less leak-prone materials, such as plastic, there was an average of one leak for every 200 miles driven.

Come together

It may seem surprising to think of Google working with an environmental NGO and a utilities company to fix gas leaks, but Karin Tuxen-Bettman, a program coordinator for Google Earth Outreach, says it is the organization’s mission to use Google’s mapping tools to address our world’s most pressing problem.

Millie Chu Baird, managing director at EDF, says the partnership between EDF and Google Earth Outreach was an easy fit because both organizations went in with an open mind and shared the same philosophical backbone of bringing this information to the public.

National Grid jumped on board when the company realized that the project would show them something about their system that they had never considered before.

“The technology…helps us understand how much gas is leaking. We never looked at it that way—we looked at the proximity of the leak to people and buildings where it could potentially ignite and cause a problem. EDF wants to know what it does to the atmosphere. It’s a different perspective, even though we are looking at the same leak,” says Fleck.

National Grid realizes that their customers are becoming increasingly interested in this kind of information, but the partnership with EDF and Google Earth Outreach was key to presenting it in a useful way, says Fleck.

“We don’t have the kind of technology that Google has to link this stuff up…. It would have been really boring and inaccessible, and I don’t think it would have been very helpful at all,” says Fleck.

And in the end, bringing this information to the public is what is most important, says Baird. “It is uncommon that you have an environmental problem that has such a readily available solution, and in this case, it is about getting the public support to [update the infrastructure],” she says.

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A new scientific analysis shows that not only bees, but other pollinators and animal life, are suffering from the use of neonicotinoids, and scientists are calling on governments to intervene. The European Commission has already banned the pesticide for two years, while the U.S. has announced the creation of an inter-agency task force to protect pollinators. In Canada, a lack of federal action has forced local governments into taking the lead.

The Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, made up of 29 scientists from around the world, analyzed over 800 peer-reviewed studies published in the last five years—including industry sponsored ones. They found that neonicotinoids were largely responsible for honeybee declines and posed risks to other pollinators and animals, such as birds, earthworms, butterflies and aquatic life.

Neonicotinoids are used on staple crops, such as corn and soybeans, as well as annual and perennial plants sold at garden centres and green houses.

As of August 2013, Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency had received 79 reports from more than 322 different bee yards that honeybees were dying with symptoms typical of pesticide exposure, such as twitching and inability to fly. These reports coincided with the planting of corn and soybean crops treated with insecticides.

“More than 20,000 known species of bees serve as the lynchpin of a global pollination ecosystem that also includes hummingbirds, beetles, flies, moths and many others,” Jeremy Runnalls, Corporate Knights’ managing editor reported last January.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says that 80 percent of flowering plants and 35 percent of the world’s crops are reliant on pollinators for production.

A joint study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2013 pointed to parasites and disease, poor nutrition and a lack of genetic diversity in bee colonies as potential contributors to honeybee deaths.

Instead of focusing on neonicotinoids, Monsanto, Bayer and other agrochemical companies have listed these other factors as potential reasons for the decline in honeybees..

Even so, Home Depot’s vice president of merchandising and sustainability, Ron Jarvis, announced last week that the company would require its suppliers to label plants dosed with neonicotinoids by the end of the year. The company will also conduct tests to see if it is possible to raise healthy plants without using the pesticide.

But, as Corporate Knights reported last December, labeling may not be enough as consumers are confused by the different symbols they are expected to recognize.

“We can now clearly see that [neonicotinoids]…pose a risk to ecosystem functioning and services which go far beyond concern around one species and which really much warrant government and regulatory attention,” said Maarten Bijleveld van Lexmond, chair of the task force, in an online statement.

Indeed, the WIA analysis makes it clear that political action is needed to protect honeybees and other pollinators and to bring the negative effects of neonicotinoids under control.

The European Commission restricted the use of three pesticides belonging to the neonicotinoids family starting in December 2013 for two years or until more information becomes available.

Syngenta, a company that makes the pesticide, withdrew its “emergency” application today to use the neonicotinoids on canola crops in the E.U. Almost 250,000 people protested through online petitions and letters, reported the Guardian. But, the company says it withdrew because the Commission did not approve the application with enough time to distribute the product to farmers for this year’s growing season.

A memo issued by the White House last Friday said that a new inter-agency task force has been charged with drafting a strategy to protect pollinators, such as honeybees, butterflies and bats. At President Obama’s request for federal agencies to take action to advance the health of honeybees and other pollinators, the U.S. Agriculture Department promised US $8 million in incentives to farmers and ranchers who are willing to build new habitats for honeybees.

But in Canada, local governments are taking the most aggressive action to protect their honeybees.

The Prince Edward County council in Southern Ontario passed a resolution last May that banned the use of neonicotinoids and asked the federal government to put a moratorium on the pesticide until further research could be conducted.

Sam Merulla, a city councillor in Hamilton, Ontario will ask city council this month to meet with McMaster University, the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Ontario Beekeepers Association to figure out how to deal with this problem. Banning the pesticide is on the table.

By comparison, the Canadian government has avoided placing a moratorium on neonicotinoids. Instead, it has released planting guidelines for corn and soybeans to minimize honeybee exposure to the pesticide. The recommendations include reducing dust from the coated seeds, using safer planting practices, cleaning equipment, and improving labeling for seeds treated with the pesticide.

The government will monitor the 2014 growing season and evaluate the outcomes of the recommendations. Health Minister Rona Ambrose called the research done by Health Canada on this matter “inconclusive,” as reported by the CBC.

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