The world’s wetlands are slipping away. This vibrant sanctuary underscores the stakes

Sarah Gibbens 

In the lush, bright-green thickets of the Philippine’s Agusan Marsh, nestled in the country’s far south Mindanao island, children steer canoes through meandering waterways and swim in lakes.

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About 60 percent of the 15,000 people living in the Agusan Marsh are Agusan Manobos, a local Indigenous group. Seen here, fog and smoke from nearby fires pollutes the air over a Manobo village. Fires have become more common as wetlands fall prey to drought or are manually drained to make room for crops like palm oil, rice, and corn.

The marsh is a playground, as well as a source of food, shelter, and culture for the Manobo Indigenous tribe that lives there in moored floating houses that rise and fall with the rainy seasons. For hundreds of years, this wetland ecosystem has been a veritable paradise for the Manobo people who make a living there hunting and fishing. The more than 100,000 inland acres is also home to nearly 200 species of birds, as well as mammals, reptiles, and fish living in the region.

The Agusan Marsh represents everything wetlands can offer—storm protection, food security, biodiversity, carbon storage—but also the large challenges they face.

Upstream pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction threaten the sanctity of this ecosystem. Pollutants from mining operations and palm oil plantations compromise water quality, and critical, carbon-rich peatlands are being drained and burned to make room for more palm oil, rice, and corn.

Fifty years ago today, on February 2, 1971, representatives of 18 nations meeting in Ramsar, Iran, adopted the Convention on Wetlands, also called the Ramsar Convention, a treaty aimed at conserving wetlands around the world. Today, 171 countries have signed the treaty. But since 1971, more than 35 percent of the world’s wetlands have been drained for urban development or agriculture, polluted, paved over, or lost to sea level rise.

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A Manobo child sits on the remnants of highway construction built to transport palm oil from the plantations in Agusan Marsh.

 Some Manobo have been forced inland to escape pollution flowing into the marsh from tibutaries. The wetland was once pristine, full of 59 lakes and swamps that provided fresh water and plentiful fish.

February 2 remains a day devoted to calling attention to the plight of wetlands, and this year, World Wetlands Day is highlighting them as a critical source of freshwater at a time when that commodity is becoming ever more scarce.

“Wetlands and their species and ecosystems services are still in decline, and that is after 50 years of concerted international effort through the contracting parties to the Convention. Something more is needed,” says Max Finlayson, an author of a 2018 report that assessed the state of the world’s wetlands.

What are wetlands and what do they do?

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Agricultural companies and palm oil producers drain peatlands in Talacogon, a Philippine municipality into which the Agusan Marsh complex partially extends.

Wetlands comprise a diverse array of ecosystems that are either flooded permanently or seasonally. They’re often along the coast, in the form of grassy marshes or mangrove forests, but can also be further inland, like forested swamps or peat bogs where water collects and saturates the ground. They’re often fed by rivers and tributaries and contain lakes.

In Agusan, freshwater marshes are surrounded by forested swamps, peatland, rivers, and 59 lakes.

“I think they’ve suffered for a long time from the perception as muddy, buggy areas that didn’t have a lot of value,” says Jennifer Howard, Senior Director of Conservation International’s Blue Carbon Program. “We’ve shown recently you’re very hard pressed to find an ecosystem that’s more productive, that has all the environmental and climate benefits rolled into one.”

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Apo Francisco is a tribal elder, living in the Agusan Marsh's Lake Benuni. Using a spear passed down by previous generations, he conducts ritual animal sacrifies. The Manobos hold living creatures, especially the marsh's saltwater crocodiles, in high regard.

It’s estimated that nearly a billion people depend on wetlands for a living in some way—be it farming, fishing, tourism, or transportation—and around 40 percent of the world’s species breed in wetlands or use them as nurseries.

Wetlands are also an important source of “green” infrastructure. Like a levee that shield a town from a hurricane, coastal wetlands lessen the damage from powerful storms, helping to control flooding by blocking incoming storm surges, while reducing the impact from wind. One recent study found that one lost hectare (about 2.5 acres) of coastal wetland increased the cost of damage from major storms by $33,000 on average.

While forests are often described as the “lungs of the Earth” because they’re important sources of oxygen, wetlands are described as the kidneys because they filter upstream pollutants.

When a wetland disappears, it’s like pulling a linchpin out of a healthy environment. As pollutants and sediments float downriver, “wetlands grab all that and hold onto it,” says Howard. “Sediments are a detriment to coral reefs, and when wetlands disappear, they can choke corals.”

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A palm oil plantation grows in the Caimpugan Peatswamp. Around the world, there's a high demand for palm oil, made from the fruit of oil palm trees. The versatile oil can be used in everything from cooking to shampoo, but it's also a leading cause of deforestation.

To mitigate the effects of climate change, we need to do more than just reduce our emissions, say scientists. We also need to conserve large areas of land like forests, grasslands, and wetlands, which help remove carbon from the atmosphere by containing it in their roots and locking it in the soil. These types of environments are called “carbon sinks,” and globally, they store millions of tons of carbon every year.

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Ricky Reyes, a Manobo tribe member, hauls his morning catch from Lake Panlabuhan. The community shares their hauls with neighbors and family. Wetlands are a vital source of fisheries, and when these ecosystems are compromised, residents like the Manobos face food insecurity.

Wetlands are “one of the few ecosystems that goes from being a super-efficient [carbon] sink to a source of carbon emissions if it’s damaged,” says Howard. It’s estimated that cumulatively, wetlands contain a third of the carbon stored in soil and biomass on land. When wetlands disappear, that carbon is released into the atmosphere.

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Marites Babanto manouvers a canoe through a flowering wetland field. For 30 years, Babanto has worked to protect her home from corporations who would see it used for palm oil or agriculture. The Philippines is a dangerous place to defend the environment and around the world, and is one of the deadliest countries for environmentalists.

Issues in Agusan

How wetlands should be conserved and what it will take to do so is no mystery, say environmentalists. The hard part is drumming up enough political will and money.

The Philippines declared the Agusan Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary a protected area in 1996. It spans approximately 101,000 acres. On the international level, it’s recognized as both a “wetland of international importance” under the Ramsar Convention and Heritage Park by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Yet the last Asian Waterbird Census of the park’s birds, done in 2020, found an overall 11 percent decrease in the past year; 17,780 from 72 different species were counted, as opposed to over 20,000 in 2019. Overall bird counts had been trending up since the census began in 2014, especially as the park expanded its census staff and added new monitoring stations, but a drought in 2019 is thought to have left birds with fewer feeding grounds.

Ibonia says the park needs more resources to accurately track the marsh’s many species.

“The park lacks technical capacity to carry out all its mandate due to very limited manpower resources,” says Emmilie Ibonia, the protected area superintendent for the Agusan Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary. She writes via email that only about nine employees are contracted to manage the park.

As parts of the wetland dry out from drought or from draining by agricultural companies, the park’s protectors must also now contend with forest fires. In 2019 and 2020, an estimated 240 acres of peatland and swamp forests were burned. But Ibonia says they lack the fire-fighting equipment to suppress them.
Solutions in Agusan and globally

One of the biggest hurdles to conserving wetlands is changing how people think about them, says Howard.

For example, when given the choice between turning oceanfront property into a lucrative hotel or leaving a muddy expanse of marshland untouched, it can be hard to convince people to do the latter, she says.

In a paper published last year, a group of scientists argued that wetlands should be granted legal rights.

“Recognizing rights of nature, including for wetlands, may not be conventional in the minds of some, but equally we have seen a transition in the recognition of the rights of people in recent history,” says Finlayson, one of the study’s authors. The Yurok Tribe on the U.S. West Coast bestowed legal rights on the Klamath River in 2019.

Despite little progress in the past 50 years, conservationists are hopeful that the movement to save wetlands could finally gain traction. Wetland ecosystems have become popular contenders for carbon offset programs, in which polluters offset their carbon emissions by paying to conserve stored carbon elsewhere.

“From the private sector, demand for this carbon offset outstrips supply by a lot,” says Howard. “People realize this is a good thing we want to invest in.”

Martha Rojas Urrego, who oversees the Convention on Wetlands as its secretary general, thinks that despite an overall loss in the amount of wetlands since 1971, the world could be at a turning point in its appreciation of them. The current pandemic has raised awareness of the importance of nature, she says, as scientists warn that destroying critical wildlife habitat could lead to the emergence of more viruses like the one that causes COVID-19.

“Increasingly, we have seen that there is a recognition of the link between nature and people,” Rojas Urrego says. “This is a tragic situation that we are living in, at the same time it is showing what we do to nature has an impact on us.”

Satellite data shows climate change's effects are different globally

Climate scientists using satellites to study the effects of climate change are gaining new insights. Mario Picazzo reports.

Duration: 02:32 

January provides glimpse of future: climate researchers

Winnipeg broke into 2021 with a bit of a hot flash.

With average daily temperatures at The Forks weather station measuring a balmy -9.2 C, the month cooked to the second-warmest January on record, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.

In the midst of a pandemic, the reprieve from January’s characteristic chill brought some much-needed relief to Winnipeggers, and the opportunity to get outside without their eyelashes freezing together.

But for climate change researchers at the University of Winnipeg, it certainly doesn’t feel as simple as enjoying the weather.

They have even coined a term for the contradiction amongst themselves: blissonance. A mash-up between bliss and dissonance.

“The idea that we’re trapped between this idea of enjoying the warm weather but also subject to being aware of the impacts of this warm weather and what it represents; the departure from normal, a migration to the future,” said Matt Morison, a postdoctoral fellow at the U of W studying climate change impact on boreal forest.

Morison can’t take credit for the term (he passes that off to colleague Laura Cameron) but it captures the feeling of the moment.

He crunched data from Environment and Climate Change Canada for the Free Press, and compared it with future projection models used by the university’s Prairie Climate Centre.

The average daily minimum temperature was used as a barometer to consider how warm January 2021 was, because it is critical in determining things such as the number of pests that survive the winter, if rivers, lakes and snowpack stay frozen, and so on.

In January, the average daily minimum in Winnipeg was -13.2 C; only January 2006 was warmer, at -11.4 C.

Last month was 8.1 C warmer than the historical average for January (-21.3 C).

“We’re well above what would be considered normal for the past. We’re actually around or above what we expect to see in the later half of the century,” Morison said.

Winnipeg was far from alone as a hot spot.

Patrick Duplessis, a Ph.D. candidate at Dalhousie University, posted data to Twitter on Monday that every part of Canada saw above-average temperatures in January.

The data Duplessis used showed new warm-weather records were set in different parts of the country, with many in the Arctic and sub-Arctic, including Resolute, Rankin Inlet, and Kuujjuaq.

The northern Manitoba town of Churchill logged temperatures approximately 5 C warmer than historical averages, but didn’t make the cut for its warmest January.

Globally, winters are getting warmer and shorter. The lead scientist for the U.S. not-for-profit Berkeley Earth, Robert Rohde, pointed out Tuesday’s Groundhog Day holiday was soon going to be meaningless.

“No offence to the groundhog, but winters are effectively shorter today nearly everywhere compared to what was normal (roughly) 50 years ago,” Rohde wrote on Twitter.

Sarah Lawrynuik, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Winnipeg Free Press

Fox walking around on frozen water like it owns the place

Antarctic ice reveals Martian mineral that's rarely found on Earth

Researchers from the University of Milan knew that their mile-long ice core sample would reveal astonishing insight into Earth’s past, but their discovery of a Martian mineral could add to the mystery of Mars’ uniquely dry environment and could change how some ice core samples are interpreted.

An article posted in Nature Communications states that researchers have discovered jarosite inside a large ice dome in East Antarctica. The researchers were drilling several hundred metres deep into the Talos Dome to collect ice core samples and told Science magazine that they never expected to find jarosite crystals because it is a mineral that is abundant on Mars but rarely seen on Earth.

An ice core that was 1,620 metres long was extracted from the Talos Dome and is estimated to be approximately 153,000 years old, but the deepest part of the core could potentially contain information that extends back 250,000 years. There is visible volcanic ash and cloudy bands at the 1,439-metre mark on the core and the researchers say that some sediments trapped in the ice are from relatively close volcanoes.

© Provided by The Weather NetworkAn ice core that was extracted at Talos Dome in 2000 shows an ash layer corresponding to the Toba supervolcano eruption in Indonesia about 75,000 years ago. Credit: Dargaud/ Wikimedia Commons. (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The researchers say there are signs that some of the sediments trapped in the ice experienced distinct changes in their geologic structure, likely due to the pressure of all the ice above that part of the core and disturbances in the ice flow. Given all of these factors, the scientists conclude that the dust and ice chemically reacted to form jarosite.

Jarosite forms through a series of chemical reactions in settings where water is present. This mineral has been found on Mars during a variety of space exploration missions and scientists say that the presence of jarosite is evidence that there was once liquid water in this planet’s dry environment. The study says that the sediments experienced a number of chemical and physical changes deep inside of the ice, which could mean that ice contributed to the formation of Mars’ environment.

Given the new knowledge about how jarosite formed in Antarctic glaciers and how certain elements, such as iron, is impacted in deep ice, the study says that this could have implications for how certain minerals and compounds are dated, especially for researchers that are on the “quest for the oldest ice” on Earth.

CURIOSITIES HIDDEN WITHIN THE ICE

Martian minerals add to the list of peculiar discoveries made in giant masses of ice. A lost ‘Viking highway’ and artifacts were also revealed by melting glaciers in Norway. The researchers say that the ice in this region has been melting particularly quickly compared to other regions in Europe and that the increasing volume of archeological discoveries is a bittersweet impact of warming atmospheric temperatures.

While some glacier discoveries shed insight on ancient civilizations, some raise concerns about the potential health hazards they pose. A study that was published in the preprint server bioRxiv in January 2020 found dozens of viruses previously unknown to modern science in glaciers located in Central Asia. These glaciers are 15,000 years old and very little is known about their ability to survive and produce once the ice melts. The study warns that because glaciers around the world are rapidly shrinking, this could release microbes and viruses that have been trapped for tens to hundreds of thousands of years.

Thumbnail credit: The Washington Post. Getty Images.

Antarctica Is Melting in a Way Our Climate Models Never Predicted, Scientists Say

The Antarctic ice sheet is not melting in the linear way our climate models predicted it would. Instead, a more detailed model shows that while the rate of ice loss in the South Pole is rapidly accelerating, there are bumps of snowfall and brief reprieves from melt along the way.

© Holger Leue/The Image Bank/Getty Images

"The ice sheet is not changing with a constant rate – it's more complicated than a linear change," explains Lei Wang, who researches civil, environmental, and geodetic engineering at Ohio State University.

"The change is more dynamic: The velocity of the melt changes depending on the time."

Climate projections are imperfect by nature and subject to constant revision as we learn more, but the ones we have for Antarctica's melting ice sheet are more contested than most.

While the majority of models agree polar ice is on the decline, the extent of melt under different emission scenarios has varied quite a lot.

For many years, in fact, scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could not come to a consensus on how this melting ice would ultimately contribute to sea level rise. In the end, there was so much debate, the panel simply left out the data.

Today, IPCC models for Antarctic ice have greatly improved, but when it comes to future projections for global sea level rise, scientists say the potential for the South Pole's massive ice sheet to collapse completely still remains the single largest source of uncertainty.

Ice sheet dynamics are complex and climate variability is unpredictable. Many of our current models, on the other hand, are simple and inflexible, displaying ice loss from the Antarctic ice sheet at a constant rate.

This ignores variability in regions, years, and seasons, leading to large uncertainties in global projections of sea level rise, the researchers argue.

"I'm not saying Antarctica's ice melt is not an acute problem – it is still very acute," says Wang.

"All of Antarctica is losing mass, very rapidly. It's just a time scale problem and a rate problem, and our models that predict sea-level change should reflect that."

Today, many climate projections do not take Antarctica's fluctuating weather into account, and this could lead scientists to underestimate the ice sheet's overall impact on sea level rise or the speed at which that will happen.

By factoring in rates of change in Antarctica using data from NASA satellites, this new and more dynamic model relies on much greater detail than standard regression models.

In the end, its findings reveal that every sector of the Antarctic ice sheet shows "highly variable" seasonal and inter-annual changes in ice loss. What's more, these factors appear to play a dynamic role in the ice sheet's overall mass, not a linear one as previous models suggested.

While the West Antarctic ice sheet shows a multi-decadal trend in ice melt, for instance, the East Antarctic ice sheet shows quicker fluctuations.

In the short term, the authors found extreme snowfall events in the East Antarctic can somewhat supplement the continuous loss of ice in the West Antarctic ice sheet. Yet in the long term, those temporary regional dustings have little overall effect on the overall mass of Antarctic ice.

In 2016, for instance, a snowfall anomaly in West Antarctica, unprecedented in the past 60 years, helped offset the net mass loss of Antarctic ice over a period of four years. In a normal year of snowfall, however, West Antarctica loses five times more ice than what East Antarctica gains.

"Despite their historic magnitudes, these extreme snowfall episodes still cannot fully offset contemporary mass loss from the [West Antarctic ice sheet] and the [Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet]," the authors conclude.

"Although models predict increasing accumulation through the 21st century in response to a warmer and wetter atmosphere, it is unlikely they would be able to negate the predicted dynamic loss from the [West Antarctic ice sheet]."

In recent years, ice melt in the southern hemisphere has begun to speed up at an alarming rate, on track with our worst-case scenarios. Since 2012, recent research reveals the rate of ice loss in Antarctica has tripled compared to the two decades before.

As this vast land of ice grows ever more unstable, experts worry the rate of melt will accelerate even more due to positive feedback events. Over half the ice shelves holding up the Antarctic ice sheet are already nearing collapse.

If the world warms by 3 degrees Celsius, some models suggest melting ice in Antarctica could lift the oceans by 6.5 metres, displacing millions of people and sinking numerous coastal cities.

Further monitoring and research is needed, especially in the East Antarctic ice sheet, which has been historically overlooked, and which the authors say represents "a major source of uncertainty in the projection".

Climate models will always have a certain level of uncertainty, but the better our predictions, the greater our understanding of the actual threat will be – giving us the best chance to actually do something about it before it's too late.

The study was published in the Geophysical Research Letters.

GREEN CAPITALI$M

Dumping Coal Can Be Good for Insurance Company Stock
Tim Quinson 

As far as climate groups like the Sunrise Project are concerned, getting insurers out of the coal underwriting business is the most important thing they can do. No more insurance, no more coal.

It’s something Sunrise has been pushing for years. But while it’s happening in Europe, it hasn’t caught on in America.

Analysts at Societe Generale SA published a report about European insurers and reinsurers that, for the first time, includes a specific ESG input for stock valuations. It primarily reflects each insurer’s stance on coal, the dirtiest of atmosphere-wrecking fossil fuels. The analysts determined that an insurer’s position on coal underwriting and investments can have an effect on its valuation ranging from -3% to +9%.

In other words, insurers that do more to exit coal can gain points in their stock valuation while those who have done the least will lose.

SocGen’s scoring metric is most heavily weighted toward environmental issues, as opposed to social and governance factors. Using this system, the bank’s analysts raised their target price for Axa SA shares by 6%, their target price for Swiss Re AG, Zurich Insurance Group AG, Assicurazioni Generali SpA, Allianz SE and Munich Re by 5%, and their target price for Scor SE by 4%.

Prudential Plc ranked lowest of the 10 companies in the SocGen report, getting just a 1% boost in its target price from its coal policies.

© Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg Biggest Private Coal Miner Goes Bust As Trump Rescue Fails

Putting a stop to coal underwriting is particularly significant because, without insurance, coal projects are simply not viable, the SocGen analysts wrote in their 74-page report. “Therefore, the insurance industry can, almost single-handedly, exert pressure on coal energy producers, which other industries are less well placed to do,” they wrote.

Climate Analytics, a climate science institute, said coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, and getting rid of it is a key step to achieve the emissions reductions needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C. The institute said its research shows that coal needs to be phased out globally by 2040 to meet commitments in the Paris Agreement.

Nevertheless, little has been done to curb the growth of coal, the SocGen analysts wrote. As recently as July, new coal projects with a combined capacity of 737 gigawatts were still in the pipeline or under construction. Given this potentially disastrous trend, insurance companies deciding to get out of the business could have an outsized influence on curbing coal.

The SocGen report cites analysis from Insure Our Future, which said Axa and Swiss Re scored the highest for their underwriting policies. Both companies said they have stopped insuring new and existing coal projects. Scor, Munich Re, Allianz and Zurich Insurance have “somewhat less comprehensive” efforts to sideline coal, since they still provide insurance for some existing coal operations, according to the report.

© Photographer: Craig Warga/Bloomberg AIG SOCIAL

European insurers are at the forefront of dumping their coal investments, too. Scor, Axa, Swiss Re, Zurich Insurance and Allianz are leading the way, the analysts said.

The same can’t be said for U.S. insurers, such as American International Group Inc. and Travelers Cos., said Ross Hammond, senior strategist at the Sunrise Project. These companies are providing a lifeline to the coal industry by continuing underwriting support, he said.

AIG and Travelers are among the companies that have yet to take any steps to restrict support for the fossil-fuel industry, according to a report published in December by Insure Our Future.

The Sunrise Project is among the nonprofits behind “BlackRock’s Big Problem” campaign, which is pushing the world’s largest money manager to use its heft to press companies to align practices with a low-carbon world. For the past four years, Sunrise Project has worked through Insure Our Future to pressure the global insurance industry to stop underwriting and investing in coal.

“Ending insurance for coal and other fossil fuels is most important thing for insurers to do to fight climate change,” said Peter Bosshard, the Sunrise Project's finance program director. “It’s in the public interest.”

Sustainable Finance in Brief

© Photographer: Kristian Helgesen/Bloomberg Seafarers-4How cargo ships turned on a dime, going from engines of commerce to floating prisons almost overnight. The climate policies of the world’s biggest economies fall short of the goals set forth in the Paris Agreement. The Norway wealth fund dumped oil stocks amid a $10 billion loss on fossil fuel holdings in 2020. Keeping interest rates low in an effort to boost a weak U.S. economy may exacerbate wealth inequality between White and Black households. General Motors made a green commitment that shakes up the auto industry and might be a key moment for electric vehicle adoption.

Bloomberg Green publishes the Good Business newsletter every week, providing unique insights on climate-conscious investing and the frontiers of sustainability.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

UCP NO CONSULTATIONS NO TRANSPARENCY

Second Alberta town asks for coal consultations, pause on exploration

A second southern Alberta town is asking the provincial government to order a stop to coal exploration work until public consultations on the issue can be held.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The town council of Turner Valley approved last night a letter making the request to several United Conservative government ministers.

The town of High River approved a similar letter on Monday.

The town of Canmore, about 100 kilometres west of Calgary, has also passed a resolution asking the province to restore environmental protections to land now being explored for open-pit coal mines.

At least seven communities in southern Alberta have expressed concerns about the government's plans to dramatically expand the industry.

Those communities run from a large city to hamlets of a few hundred people.

Coal opponents fear contamination of river headwaters as well as the destruction of one of the province's most treasured landscapes.

The issue arose after the government revoked a policy last spring without warning that had protected those landscapes for more than 40 years.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 2, 2021.

TransAlta completes first of three coal-to-gas conversions; company aims to be off coal entirely by 2022

TransAlta Corp. has completed the first of three planned coal-to-gas plant conversions, a major milestone for the Calgary-based company that says it is on track to be off coal entirely by Jan. 1, 2022. 

“This is the first step toward phasing out coal in Alberta by 2023, well ahead of the 2030 timeline that Alberta had put forward,” 

© Provided by Calgary Herald TransAlta's Sundance generating station is pictured in Parkland County.

The company announced Monday that it has completed the full conversion of Sundance Unit 5, the first of three planned boiler conversions from thermal coal to natural gas at its Sundance and Keephills power generation facilities near Wabamun.


In 2021, TransAlta will complete its second and third coal-to-gas conversions, with Keephills Unit 2 by mid-June followed by Keephills Unit 3 by mid-December. In addition, TransAlta is repowering its Sundance 5 unit into a highly efficient combined-cycle gas-powered facility, which is expected to come online at the end of 2023.

By the end of this year, TransAlta will end operations at its Highvale thermal coal mine west of Edmonton and will be exclusively generating with natural gas.

In total, TransAlta is investing approximately $1 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its Alberta fleet, CEO Dawn Farrell said in an interview. She said the company is on track to reduce its emissions by more than 70 per cent from 2005 levels by the end of 2022.

“The greenhouse gas emissions that you generate on gas is about half of what you generate on coal,” Farrell said. “If we were a country, we would have the No. 1 performance globally on our emissions reduction performance.”

In 2014, 55 per cent of Alberta’s electricity was produced from coal. The Alberta government announced in 2015, under Rachel Notley’s NDP, that it would eliminate emissions from coal power generation by 2030.

The province is now on track to meet that goal much sooner, thanks to accelerated phase-out plans by electricity producers. Edmonton-based Capital Power has said it will transition its two coal-fired units at its Genesee generating station to natural gas and will shift completely off of coal by 2023. ATCO Ltd. announced three years ago that it would convert to gas by the end of 2020.

Farrell said for TransAlta, the ambitious conversion time frame was driven largely by provincial and federal carbon policy that makes coal a liability. She said the company — which was able to finance the project with the help of a $750-million investment from Brookfield Renewable Partners — is now positioned to be a highly competitive provider of low carbon electricity for the market and its customers.

“A lot of investors are looking for companies that have strong environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals,” Farrell said. “On the environment side, investors see us reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, frankly, very quickly and very deliberately.”

Dawn Farrell, CEO of TransAlta Corp.

Binnu Jeyakumar, an analyst with clean energy think-tank the Pembina Institute, called TransAlta’s completion of the Sundance Unit 5 conversion a “big deal.”

“This is the first step toward phasing out coal in Alberta by 2023, well ahead of the 2030 timeline that Alberta had put forward,” she said.

Jeyakumar said the rapid phase-out of coal is the fastest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector, and it also makes economic sense for companies.

“Forty-two per cent of coal plants across the world are running at a loss. Projections say that new wind and new solar will be cheaper than most existing coal plants by 2030,” she said.

While other jurisdictions have moved faster than Alberta to phase out coal — Ontario entirely eliminated coal-fired electricity generation in 2014, for example — Jeyakumar said Alberta’s rapid progress deserves praise because its electricity mix was so coal-heavy for so long.

“Coal was generating almost 50 per cent of our power for a very long time. So for a sector that was that dependent on coal to phase it out this quickly, I would say makes us among the front-runners,” Jeyakumar said.

astephenson@postmedia.com

Twitter: @AmandaMsteph

Coastal First Nations ahead of the curve in cultivating seaweed industry

Larry Johnson takes the responsibility of his traditional name — Anii-tsa-chist, or Keeper of the Sea — bestowed to him three decades ago by a much-respected uncle very seriously.

“I’m very proud of the name,” said Johnson, the president of Nuu-chah-nulth (NCN) Seafood, and a fisherman descended from generations of fishermen.

“It is an honour to hold it and to try to live up to that name, and that's what I try to do every day,” he said.

It’s why Johnson is so excited by the prospects of seaweed aquaculture, one of the newest ventures NCN Seafood has undertaken in partnership with Cascadia Seaweed.

The First Nation owned enterprise had already been exploring opportunities around the commercial cultivation of seaweed though research projects with North Island College (NIC) when the newly formed aquaculture company, Cascadia, reached out, Johnson said.

Shared goals of providing economic diversification, employment opportunities and skills training for coastal First Nations communities make for a good partnership, he added. The two companies' operations on the west coast of Vancouver Island are expected to yield approximately 80 tonnes of seaweed this spring.

However, true to his name, Johnson thinks seaweed farming is ideal because it’s rooted in First Nations tradition and commitment to the sustainable use of resources.

“We knew exactly where we belonged and our role within this environment,” he said.

“It was to maintain a balance of nature and resources, so that the resources and Mother Earth would be there for seven generations.”

Cultivating seaweed, a nutritional plant-based food, requires no land, freshwater or fertilizer. It absorbs its nutrients from water alone and provides variety of ecosystem services such as carbon capture and marine habitat regeneration, noted Johnson.

“It ticks off a lot of the boxes,” Johnson said, adding he believes seaweed farming is going to be a growth industry in B.C.

“It’s a sector perfectly suited to First Nations up and down the coast.”

The Klahoose First Nation, based on Cortes Island northeast of Vancouver Island, is another coastal community ahead of the curve when it comes to cultivating seaweed.

Qathen Xwegus Management Corporation (QXMC), the Klahoose economic development arm, is working with Cascadia to cultivate seaweed in conjunction with the nation’s existing shellfish sites, said Paul Muskee, operations manger of Klahoose Shellfish.

“We're so excited about it,” said Muskee, adding kelp has been seeded adjacent to the Klahoose’s geoduck nursery in Squirrel Cove and alongside a mussel operation in Gorge Harbour.

Beyond the fact the seaweed might protect shellfish from increasingly acidic ocean due to warming waters, the fast-growing algae provides income and harvest opportunities while waiting for longer growing shellfish to mature, he said.

Kelp typically has about a six-month winter growing season while geoducks take seven years to grow to maturity.

“Geoducks are a longer-term game, so it would be just amazing to be able to grow kelp overtop of (them),” Muskee said.

If the initial seaweed cultivation projects perform well, the Klahoose hope to apply to the province to add seaweed licences to three other deep-water geoduck tenures, he said.

However the regulatory process is unwieldy and time-consuming, even with an existing shellfish tenure in place, Muskee said.

“It took eight months just to get kelp added as an accepted species,” he said.

Other First Nations applying from scratch for aquaculture tenure as well would likely face a much longer timeline, he added.

“I believe the biggest challenge for this industry is going to be getting enough tenures permitted in the next year,” Muskee said.

“We feel like (the regulatory process) is probably understaffed.”

But if they can get all their kelp licences online, the Klahoose hope to become a centre of regional production with the attendant sustainable jobs, Muskee said.

“We want to produce enough so we could become a hub and, maybe in the future, attract Cascadia to set up a nursery here or a processing facility,” Muskee said.

The small Kwiakah First Nation is taking a curious but cautious approach to the possibilities of seaweed cultivation, said Frank Voelker, Kwiakah band manager and economic development officer.

The Kwiakah Nation’s first priority is exploring kelp cultivation as a means to support its conservation goal of regenerating seaweed forests that have diminished in its traditional waters in the Phillips and Frederick Arm region on B.C.’s isolated central coast, Voelker said.

“The principle of seaweed farming is intriguing,” Voelker said, adding the sustainable and regenerative aspects of the sector are appealing.

But it’s early days in the industry, and the Kwiakah want to ensure cultivating seaweed on a widespread commercial basis won’t have unintended consequences or pose environmental risks typically associated with industrial farming, he added.

“If it really is as benign as it looks like right now, that would be fantastic,” Voelker said.

However, there are also logistical and economic factors that play into cultivating seaweed, he added.

Seaweed farming might not make sense for every coastal First Nation, he said.

Remote coastal First Nations may not be close enough to processing facilities to make the transport of a fragile, perishable product economically viable, he added, noting Kwiakah traditional territories are 70 kilometres away by water from the nearest port of Campbell River.

But it’s worth exploring what processing could be done in a remote community for seaweed products, even if not destined for the more rigorously regulated food market, Voelker said.

“But does it make sense that every individual band creates their own products, and having their own processing facilities?” he asked. “I don't think so.”

Plus, First Nations communities would have to find enough capital to start up and maintain the infrastructure, he said.

“I'm cautiously optimistic that there is a business case for seaweed farming,” Voelker said, adding he’s not suggesting those already involved in the sector have jumped the gun.

The Kwiakah are simply doing more research to answer questions around seaweed cultivation based on their individual circumstances and location, he said.

“We're just exploring whether there are ways to do it that are economically feasible.”

Rochelle Baker / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer

Rochelle Baker, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, National Observer