Media Contacts
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Jacqueline Nunes
Director of Marketing
Nature United
Email: jacqueline.nunes@natureunited.ca
Nature is one of Canada’s greatest advantages. Our forests, farmlands and waters are understood by Canadians to be a foundation for self-reliance, resilience and long-term prosperity. Investing in these solutions supports communities, lowers long term costs and strengthens our national competitiveness from within.
As the Government of Canada prepares to announce a federal Nature Action Plan, we welcome the opportunity to recommit to the delivery of Canada’s 2030 Nature Strategy and its targets under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, including halting and reversing biodiversity loss, protecting 30% of lands and waters and restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030. The recent announcement of support for the Hudson Bay National Marine Conservation Area is an example of how a Nature Action Plan that invests in ecosystems, partners with Indigenous governments and builds modern solutions for nature-positive growth can future-proof prosperity for all Canadians.
We have recommended six priorities to deliver on a Canadian vision for a nature-positive future:
Enhance coordination and mutual accountability.
Clarifying federal mandates and engaging with provincial and territorial departments will ensure nature-positive solutions are effectively woven into cross-cutting priorities, including projects of national interest, forest, agriculture, conservation-based and marine sector support.
Deliver on existing protection and restoration commitments.
Maintaining funding and capacity for key implementation measures, such as Indigenous Guardian programs, Indigenous-led conservation, Nature Agreements and key Project Finance for Permanence initiatives and IPCAs will ensure commitments can be upheld.
Supercharge nature finance.
Encouraging proponents of Projects of National Interest to offset and compensate for ecosystem impacts will yield gains for ecosystems and drive nature net positive outcomes, while supercharging finance for nature protection and restoration.
Enable nature-positive working landscapes and seascapes.
Derisking investments in sustainable agriculture, forestry and fisheries and incentivizing Indigenous ownership across productive value chains through blended finance, Investment Tax Credits, Indigenous Loan Guarantees and graduated tax incentives will offer social and financial return opportunities for national and international investors.
Accelerate high-integrity nature-based offsets.
Accelerating the development of nature-based carbon protocols, addressing financial and technical barriers hindering project development under existing protocols, developing a biodiversity credit market, clarifying Indigenous entitlements to environmental attributes and committing to long-term government procurement of offsets will provide predictability, stability and significantly encourage project development and offset market growth.
Invest in nature data modernization and valuation.
Investing in national ecosystem mapping, valuation and data standardization and transparency; making data publicly available and accessible to all levels of government, industry and other stakeholders; and supporting Indigenous-led monitoring and data governance will improve planning and enable nature-positive private investment.
Lead on natural capital budgeting.
Integrating natural capital into fiscal planning will ensure Canada’s balance sheets reflect the essential value of healthy ecosystems.
Nature United looks forward to working with the Government of Canada to build on the foundations laid in Budget 2025 to embrace the full value of nature as a uniquely Canadian driver of a prosperous economy.
Nature United was founded as a Canadian charity in 2014, building on decades of conservation in Canada. Headquartered in Toronto, our organization has field staff located across the country. Nature United supports Indigenous leadership, sustainable economic development and science and large-scale conservation, primarily in British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and Manitoba. Our organization is also working to accelerate Natural Climate Solutions at national and regional scales. To learn more, visit natureunited.ca or follow us on Linkedin, Instagram and Facebook.
We are the Canadian affiliate of The Nature Conservancy, a global conservation organization with more than a million members and a diverse team that includes more than 1,000 scientists. Our global organization works in 83 countries and territories (39 by direct conservation impact and 44 through partners) to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends. To learn more, visit www.nature.org.