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Canada's Natural Resources in high demand, but Underexploited

Peter Munk has his eye on a patch of dirt in northwestern British Columbia. It's a rugged corner of the province. Ice-capped mountain peaks tower over a carpet of spruce and fir, while a receding glacier has scraped the valley floor down to raw rock. But the famously wily mining executive isn't after this plot of land, known as Galore Creek, for the view. Munk wants what lies deep beneath - a vast, untapped treasure chest of copper, silver and gold. And he's willing to pay close to $2 billion to get it. That's serious coin. Especially since there's no guarantee the mine will ever get off the ground.

Novagold Corp., the junior miner that bought the property three years ago, has plunked down tens of millions of dollars to bring it to life. The company rerouted an access road around sensitive rivers and snared the support of the local Tahltan First Nation with a $50-million trust fund. It even plans to build a "green" hydroelectric power plant nearby. In fact, the mine-to-be is so promising that Munk's Barrick Gold Corp., the world's largest gold producer, has been locked in a four-month battle to buy control of Galore Creek and Novagold's other projects.

Not so fast. Despite a 2004 agreement between the federal and provincial governments to streamline the environmental approval process for mines like Galore Creek, the green light has yet to come. Galore Creek isn't alone. There's a growing backlog of 25 mines, worth $8 billion in capital investment, grinding their way through government channels in B.C. alone. No new mine has opened in the province since the late 1990s.

Dan Jepsen, head of B.C.'s mineral exploration association, says red tape is killing the industry. "We have such huge bureaucracies and federal and provincial turf wars that it creates huge frustrations," he says. "B.C. wants to send a message that the province is open to MINING, but this story is going to die very quickly if we can't show we can get these mines approved." Critics, though, argue governments are cutting corners in their duty to assess the environmental and social dangers posed by some new mines. "This government would go ahead and approve just about any bad mine plan in the name of economic development," says Glenda Ferris, an environmental activist in northern B.C. "The industry thinks it can self-regulate, which is basically my worst nightmare."

Canada has long been ambivalent about its natural RESOURCES - we're blessed with massive stores of petroleum, minerals and forests, but always worried that our reliance on them hinders development of knowledge-based industries. As then-international trade minister Pierre Pettigrew proclaimed in 2002: "If we want the world to associate Canada with innovation and competitiveness, we have to change the perception of Canada as just a source of raw lumber, or metals or wheat." A commodity boom later, and Canada is cashing in on its natural inheritance once again. According to a recent TD Economics report, global investors have injected more than $100 billion into commodity industries worldwide in recent years. Canada has captured an impressive slice of that capital. Even today, after decades of economic diversification, more than one million jobs depend on the resource sector, making it our second-largest employer.

But Canada faces tough decisions about how it manages and invests in its natural assets, from forestry and energy to agri-foods and mining. There's a growing awareness, even in business, that a line must be drawn between exploiting resources and abusing them; that for Canada to truly capitalize on its resources, the benefits must flow to a wide cross-section of society to assure prosperity. The Conference Board of Canada set out to find solutions through its Canada Project. Its final report offers a road map to achieving sustainable growth over the next two decades.

Forestry
The old saying that Canada is a nation of hewers of wood has taken a beating in recent years; barely a week goes by that a lumber or pulp mill isn't shut down. Since 2001, more than 110 mills have closed, throwing close to 20,000 people out of work. From Kenora, Ont., to Carrot River, Sask., at least 85 communities have seen a major employer vanish. Most aren't coming back. Canada is still the world's largest exporter of newsprint and the second-largest exporter of pulp and softwood lumber, but our market share is steadily slipping even as global demand for forest products is marching higher. China alone has doubled the amount of wood pulp it imports.

The challenge for Canada is that other nations are ramping up production. During the 1990s, the number of countries exporting newsprint jumped to 57 from 33, while 180 countries exported solid wood products, up from 111 in 1990. South America is building some of the world's largest pulp mills, while China's Nine Dragons Paper Co. now operates the world's largest paper mill. While "super mills" are becoming commonplace in other countries, Canada's pulp and paper industry remains fragmented, with dozens of small mills scattered across the country. A "super mill" can produce at least a million tonnes a year of product. In Canada, the average size of mills is around 200,000 tonnes. The Conference Board points out that 10 pulp and seven newsprint "super mills" could theoretically handle the output of Canada's 72 existing mills. But any such drive for greater efficiency would entail heavy losses. It would also require heavy capital investment. And governments will have to overhaul many of their forest tenure policies to make it easier for new larger mills to obtain wood chips and logs. In most provinces, trees on Crown land are reserved for local mills, and rules block logs from being transported across provincial borders. All that would have to change.

Mill closures don't make for happy voters, of course, so instead of encouraging efficiency, governments are in the habit of pumping millions into outdated mills to keep them open. "While this action has the effect of keeping the operation going," the board writes, "it does nothing to postpone the obsolescence of the mill or improve its competitiveness." In the late 1990s, for example, B.C. subsidized the Skeena cellulose mill in Prince Rupert to avoid a shutdown. When the mill finally closed in 2001, the cost to the province was $323 million. The board suggests industry and provincial governments work together to anticipate which mills are at risk, and develop a plan to help the affected towns diversify their economies. Quebec appears ready to accept permanent shutdowns. After a spate of recent mill closures, Premier Jean Charest announced more than $700 million over four years to help the industry restructure, while providing funding to communities. "This is the moment to be lucid and frank," he said recently, "and recognize that a restructuring has consequences."

At the same time, the board argues governments should encourage innovation. Pulp mills can be adapted to become "bio-refineries" capable of producing energy, fuels or chemicals from underused mill residue. By gasifying black liquor, a recycled by-product of the pulp process, a mill can produce syngas, which can be converted into power. It's already happening: earlier this year, Tolko Industries launched a new energy plant at its Heffley Creek plywood mill near Kamloops. The plant, built by Vancouver-based Nexterra Energy, converts mill waste to syngas that Tolko uses to replace natural gas.

Ottawa has taken some steps to promote biomass production through tax breaks. The board urges the government to go further, and give the same financial incentives to biomass energy as it does to wind power. Ottawa should also follow the lead of the U.S., which offers grants to make it cheaper to buy forest biomass that's used to produce electricity. With these sorts of changes, the board argues, even Canada's outdated pulp and paper mills could rise to meet global competition.

Agri-food
Canadians have never been more passionate about their food. They flock to gourmet organic grocery stores, dine at exotic Asian fusion restaurants, and feast on TV cooking shows. But in an era of genetically modified fruits, ever more powerful pesticides and new, enriched foods, consumers are also demanding to know exactly where that egg or loaf of bread came from. And they're willing to pay a premium for that knowledge. Yet Canada's rickety agri-foods sector is ill-equipped to meet their needs. "Agriculture in Canada is 20 or 30 years behind other industries," says Martin Gooch, a research associate at the George Morris Centre, an agriculture think tank at the University of Guelph. "It's like looking at how Toyota fares compared to GM to see how much competitive advantage you can get by working with your suppliers."

The Conference Board argues that our agri-food sector needs a major overhaul. It may have boosted its exports by 83 per cent to more than $20 billion since 1990, but our share of global exports, after growing from 3.2 per cent in 1995 to 4.3 per cent in 2001, has since fallen back to 3.7 per cent. The drop can be traced to the hysteria over mad cow disease, as well as a severe drought in 2003, but reams of red tape and regulatory backlogs are hurting Canada's competitiveness.

For one thing, producers can't get their hands on certain additives and environmentally friendly pesticides that are available to farmers in Europe and the U.S. According to the George Morris Centre, which worked with the Conference Board on its report, animal drug companies do extensive R&D in Canada, but the final product is often only available in other countries. "The approval system is slower in Canada than anywhere else," says Cher Brethour, a senior researcher at the centre. "A farmer in the U.S. has access to better drugs than here."

Meanwhile, consumers are browsing the grocery store aisles for food with specific characteristics, but regulators here are slow to adapt approval and labelling rules. There is no system in place to approve so-called "functional foods" like Omega-3 eggs and calcium-enriched orange juice quickly, says Brethour, despite their popularity. And stringent labelling rules limit producers from marketing low-carbohydrate food. "The government urges the sector to differentiate and diversify," the board says, "but does nothing to change a regulatory system that rewards sameness and makes innovation costly."

Farmers are now also faced with the very modern problem of managing the environment, given the growing awareness that heavy pesticide use near certain wildlife habitats is wreaking havoc. One option is to pay farmers to stop farming, at least in environmentally sensitive areas. The board advocates compensating producers for the "natural capital" they preserve. The concept faces hurdles, not the least of which is how to value the benefits of clean air and water. There are pilot projects in Ontario and Manitoba, and the World Bank has looked at ways to value environmental benefits. "In the near future," the board believes, "it is likely that these types of policy mechanisms and valuation techniques will gain more presence in Canada."

Mining
Steven Dean knows a thing or two about mining in Canada. When he was president of Vancouver-based Teck Corp., he helped merge the company with Cominco Ltd. in 2001, creating one of the country's largest miners. And like many executives who leave jobs at major mining companies, he went on to finance a junior exploration outfit. But a few months ago, while choosing between two copper projects in which to invest, one here, the other in South America, the decision came down to taxes - and the Canadian project lost out. "The post-tax economics were decidedly in favour of the South American project," says Dean. "It reminded us, quite concisely, of the impact of tax on projects here."

It's an all-too-familiar story. Canada is the market of choice for raising mining finance. More than half of the world's public mining companies are listed here, and mining firms raised $8 billion on our exchanges last year. But only $1 billion stayed in Canada, according to the Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia. "I'm not pleased with that context that we're recognized as a global centre for financing," says Dan Jepsen, CEO of AMEBC, "but most of the investment goes elsewhere."

That's a concern to the Conference Board too, which points out the steady decline of mineral reserves in the country over the past quarter-century. The national inventory of deposits is being depleted faster than new mines are opened. At the same time, a series of major deals has taken some of Canada's largest mining companies out of play, such as Falconbridge and Inco. As a result, the board argues that the federal and provincial governments must stimulate mineral exploration by juniors in order to capitalize on soaring metal prices.

They should, for example, streamline the environmental assessment process to avoid delays when multiple jurisdictions and agencies are involved. Aboriginal involvement should be ramped up too, especially in B.C., to smooth the way for new projects and address a growing threat to the mining sector - a looming lack of workers. Half of Canada's mining workforce is between 40 and 54 years old. Don Lindsay, CEO of Teck Cominco, has said worker shortage is the biggest challenge facing the Canadian mining sector. The fastest-growing population group in Canada is Aboriginals, and there are moves to bring them into the workforce. At the Voisey's Bay nickel mine in Newfoundland and Labrador, an $85-million program is underway to train Aboriginals.

In B.C., the British Columbia Institute of Technology launched a training program for Aboriginals more than a year ago. The instructor, Jim Morin, is a Metis who spent 10 years with Inco. He's travelled to reserves and attracted dozens to the program, which is backed by AMEBC and the provincial government. "It would be a win-win situation for both sides," he says. "Sites of high unemployment would be changed, people would get more financial capability and transferable skills, and the companies would have access to a workforce that's local, wouldn't have to be brought in from outside, and would presumably have a low turnover."

Energy
When Stephen Harper met with other G8 leaders this past summer, he touted Canada as an "energy superpower." After all, with soaring oil prices and the development of the Alberta oil sands, Canada's petroleum sector is a $90-billion-a-year business. Our natural gas wells are brimming. We've got vast reserves of coal, and turbines capture the power of our rivers. But the Conference Board argues Harper didn't go far enough when describing Canada's role as electrical outlet to the world. "We think he should put the word clean in front of it," says Gilles Rheaume, vice-president of public policy. "The markets will drive us as an energy superpower, but the key thing is to make sure the environment is not left by itself. Clean energy has to be broader than just talking about windmills."

The board is just one of many groups that see the need for a plan to deal with climate change. It argues for investment in technologies such as carbon dioxide sequestration, which involves capturing and storing greenhouse gases. Canada should also have a plan to deal with the effects of climate change, such as unstable weather patterns and possible widespread flooding. The biotech sector should play a role in developing drought- and flood-resistant crops. "The climate is changing," says Rheaume, "but there is no strategy on adaptation."

The board calls as well for the regulatory approval process to be made more efficient. Canada has played a relatively small role, for instance, in liquefied natural gas. That could grow with investment in new storage sites. There are currently eight proposed LNG projects, from Point Tupper, N.S. to Ridley Island, B.C. For energy infrastructure projects, the board recommends governments set timelines for environmental approvals that meet annual performance targets for regulatory bodies. If delays continue, Canada risks missing out as developing nations like India and China hunt for affordable energy.

Meanwhile, Canada's own energy needs are threatened by shortfalls in the power grid and outdated transmission systems. The board points out "hot spots" where community opposition has led to delays. By mid-2007, the main transmission line on Vancouver Island will have outlived its projected lifespan. There have been attempts to build a new system, but they've gone nowhere. Unless a new line is built soon, "the people of Vancouver Island risk serious economic and social disruptions." In Toronto, meanwhile, the city's transmission lines are running at full capacity. Efforts to build a new generation station are moving slowly, and new transmission lines would have to be erected across the city. If the project does win public support, the board points out the regulatory approval process will take at least another five years.

Canada's energy sector is clearly in overdrive. Yet there is dire need of investment in certain areas, such as regulatory oversight and environmental technologies. In fact, the board says Canada should adopt a national energy framework to guide the energy sector into the future. Wary of rekindling sour memories of the Trudeau-era National Energy Policy, the board envisions more of a statement of energy policy, rather than new rules that might infringe on the provinces. But the idea is that Canada needs a road map to the future, and Ottawa is in the best position to provide "a strong sense of direction for Canada's energy industry."

Maclean's November 27, 2006

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadas-natural-resources-in-high-demand-but-underexploited/

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World Footprint

Do we fit on the planet?

Today humanity uses the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste. This means it now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year.

Moderate UN scenarios suggest that if current population and consumption trends continue, by the 2030s, we will need the equivalent of two Earths to support us. And of course, we only have one.

Turning resources into waste faster than waste can be turned back into resources puts us in global ecological overshoot, depleting the very resources on which human life and biodiversity depend.

The result is collapsing fisheries, diminishing forest cover, depletion of fresh water systems, and the build up of carbon dioxide emissions, which creates problems like global climate change. These are just a few of the most noticeable effects of overshoot.

Overshoot also contributes to resource conflicts and wars, mass migrations, famine, disease and other human tragedies—and tends to have a disproportionate impact on the poor, who cannot buy their way out of the problem by getting resources from somewhere else.

Ending Overshoot

The Earth provides all that we need to live and thrive. So what will it take for humanity to live within the means of one planet?

Individuals and institutions worldwide must begin to recognize ecological limits. We must begin to make ecological limits central to our decision-making and use human ingenuity to find new ways to live, within the Earth’s bounds.

This means investing in technology and infrastructure that will allow us to operate in a resource-constrained world. It means taking individual action, and creating the public demand for businesses and policy makers to participate.

Using tools like the Ecological Footprint to manage our ecological assets is essential for humanity’s survival and success. Knowing how much nature we have, how much we use, and who uses what is the first step, and will allow us to track our progress as we work toward our goal of sustainable, one-planet living.

*See the Ecological Footprint Atlas for more information.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/world_footprint/

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US Thirsts for Canadian Water

On the border between Nevada and Arizona sits Lake Mead, the biggest man-made reservoir in the United States, created when the Hoover Dam was built in the 1930s. It is the shimmering oasis that makes urban life possible in the middle of the bleached desert landscape of the Mojave. It's also the epicentre of North America's burgeoning WATER crisis.

All around the 880 km of Mead's rocky shoreline, a bright white calcium deposit, known to locals as the bathtub ring, marks a high water level that is a quickly fading memory. Drought has dropped the surface of the lake 20 m below the bathtub ring over the past five years. Boulder Beach, once a popular day trip destination for nearby residents, is now about 300 m from the water's edge. The boat launch and fuel pumps of what used to be a marina are abandoned in the middle of what now looks like a parking lot. The marina and its luxury yachts chased the water to a new location a couple of miles down the road more than a year ago.

It would all seem funny if it weren't so scary. Lake Mead is the principal source of drinking water for the Las Vegas valley - the fastest growing urban area in the United States. In all, more than three trillion gallons of water have disappeared due to drought, evaporation and overuse in five years, raising profound questions about the sustainability of growth in the U.S. southwest. The Colorado River, which not only feeds Lake Mead but also drives the turbines of the Hoover Dam, is a critical source of drinking water and power for much of southern California and Arizona. And between 2000 and early 2005, its flow dropped by almost half.

Las Vegas has responded with some of the most aggressive water CONSERVATION measures on the continent. Every drop of indoor water is treated and either reused for irrigation or returned to the Colorado. Strict limits are placed on all outdoor spraying, and the water authority pays homeowners US$1 per square foot to pull up lawn grass and replace it with less thirsty desert vegetation. All this helps, but it doesn't fix a thing. "This DROUGHT has been a huge wake-up call," says Patricia Mulroy, head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. "But conservation alone cannot solve the problem. If we continue to grow as we have, at some point we simply need more water in the system." That's why Las Vegas is steaming ahead with a highly controversial plan to build a US$2-billion, 400-km pipeline to transport groundwater from the northern part of the state to slake the thirst of a city whose population is expected to double over the next decade.

The problems facing Las Vegas are part of a developing crisis slowly tightening its grip on much of the world. As the global population grows and developing economies expand, the demand for safe, secure water will accelerate just as it has in the fastest-growing pockets of the U.S. In response, much of the world is embracing the need for large-scale water trade and transport, just as Las Vegas has. Last year, Turkey and Israel finalized a deal to ship 50 billion litres a year from the Manavgat River to help supply Israel's growing population and agricultural needs. Several countries, including Greece and Cyprus, already import water and more are making plans and striking deals to ensure their farms and cities continue to thrive. North America is no exception. Engineers agree that, if Nevada can pipe water 400 km south, eventually it could pipe it all the way from the Canadian border.

But Canada, the most water-rich nation on the planet, wants no part of this new world. And that puts our priorities on a collision course with the needs of our biggest trading partner and most essential ally. Already the White House has mused about the need to open the Canada-U.S. border to water exports, and dozens of communities are lining up to reform a 96-year-old treaty that limits the amount drawn from the Great Lakes. This country is in a position to provide a solution that would yield enormous economic and humanitarian benefits for the entire continent, even the world. For now, though, the forces aligned against trade in water are firmly in control. A 2002 survey by the Centre for Research and Information on Canada found that 69 per cent of Canadians are opposed to water exports, and Ottawa has obediently bowed to public pressure, instituting a blanket ban on exports from boundary waters three years ago. That was a politically savvy move at the time, but the day may be coming when Canada will face an even starker choice: sell, or see its most vital resource siphoned off from the south.

The first hint of water tension surfaced in 2001, when U.S. President George W. Bush made an offhand comment that he'd like to begin discussions with Ottawa about a framework for international trade in water to alleviate shortages. Canadian reaction was swift, shrill and unequivocal: "We're absolutely not going to export water, period," then-environment minister David Anderson said. The issue quickly faded from the headlines, but not from the public consciousness. Whether it's inherent distrust of corporations, latent anti-Americanism, or simple fear of ecological destruction, Canadians recoil at the very thought of treating water like oil or natural gas, or any of the other commodities that form the bedrock of the Canadian economy. In the words of Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians and the country's leading water crusader, "Water is part of the Earth's heritage and must be preserved in the public domain for all time. Instead of allowing this vital resource to become a commodity sold to the highest bidder, we believe that access to clean water is a fundamental human right."

But even if that's true, and water is not a commodity like any other, then it's a right being denied to much of the world's population, even in rich countries. All across the U.S., communities are drying out. Drought has cut the flow of the Missouri River by a third, and intensive farming in the Midwest has substantially drained the enormous Ogallala aquifer that stretches from South Dakota to Texas. Even in northern climates like Wisconsin and Illinois, residents are dealing with dry wells that have failed to keep pace with soaring demand. When the U.S. government surveyed the 50 states in 2003, more than two-thirds said they expect to face some sort of water shortage within the next 10 years. The situation is even worse in the developing world. The United Nations estimates that by 2025, two-thirds of the world population, or almost 5.5 billion people, will face chronic water shortages, and scientists expect GLOBAL WARMING will only make things worse.

In this context, Canada is a country of unbelievable water wealth. This country boasts more than 20 per cent of the world's fresh water, and the flow of rain, spring water and snowmelt that courses through our waterways represents seven per cent of the planet's renewable water supply - all to satisfy the needs of just 0.5 per cent of the world's population. This fundamental gap between global demand and Canada's ready supply has already attracted several business consortiums over the past two decades with plans to skim lake water for export. A couple even managed to garner the support of provincial governments in Newfoundland and Ontario in the 1990s, but those plans were quickly scuttled by public outcry and federal intervention.

But as the global water crisis deepens over the next two decades, this country's intransigence will prove increasingly difficult to maintain. Canada is offside even the UN's position on the matter. In 1997, the UN said that international water markets and trade are likely the only way to alleviate chronic shortages worldwide, while discouraging water waste in areas where it's plentiful. But it's not just a humanitarian issue: there is an enormous commercial opportunity and economic imperative at stake. If Canada insists on opting out of international water trade, that decision will almost surely do severe damage to the country's economy and standard of living.

Water is "liquid fuel for growth," says Robert Glennon, a professor of law at the University of Arizona, and one of the world's leading authorities on water policy. Just as human beings can't survive without moisture, economies can die of thirst. And if the U.S. economy continues to be plagued with shortages, the implications for Canada's No. 1 export market will be devastating. "Water is no longer perceived as a gift from God, but a commodity for which one has to pay," says Dr. Isabel Al-Assar, an international trade expert based at the University of Dundee, Scotland. "Water will become like oil one day, I have no doubt about it."

If Al-Assar is right, then Canada, through a miraculous stroke of lucky geography, is sitting on a liquid gold mine. Pinpointing exactly how much Canada could reap by selling fresh water depends heavily on a long list of questions: what price would buyers be willing to pay? How would it be transported? How much could be safely withdrawn without damaging sensitive ecosystems? But in 2001, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Winnipeg-based think tank, constructed a theoretical business model showing that if Manitoba could sell 1.3 trillion gallons of water per year (roughly the amount that drains from provincial rivers into Hudson Bay in only 17 hours) at the same price charged for desalinated sea water in California, the province could reap annual profits of close to $4 billion. In 1992, the World Bank estimated that worldwide trade in water could be worth US$1 trillion within the next generation. Even the opponents of water trade acknowledge that much of that market could belong to Canada.

The alternative is not pretty. As water shortages worsen around the world, increasing attention is sure to focus on Canada's water usage, and this country has a woeful story to tell. Canada has already been singled out by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development as one of the world's most profligate wasters of water. On a per capita basis, Canadians consume 1.6 million litres of water a year - twice as much as people in France and four times as much as the average Swede. The vast majority of that is lost through primitive irrigation techniques in the agriculture industry, but personal waste is also a major culprit. And we're getting worse, while most of the world is learning to be more responsible. Between 1980 and 1999, Canada's total water use rose by 25.7 per cent, while water consumption in the U.S. declined over the same period. Several experts have suggested that the abundance of water in Canada and the fact that Canadians pay little for access to it has contributed to a culture of waste. And if the country refuses to share its water wealth in the decades ahead, it's not hard to anticipate the reaction around the world. Canada will look like the neighbour who leaves his sprinkler on all night while the rest of the street dies of thirst.

A tarnished reputation, however, is the least of Canada's concerns. Already, pressure is building in the U.S. to tap new sources of water, and replace supplies depleted through years of intensive farming, population sprawl and explosive economic growth. And as George W. Bush hinted four years ago, Canada is seen as the logical solution to the looming crisis. "I predict that the United States will be coming after our fresh water aggressively within three to five years," former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed wrote in a recent article for the Globe and Mail. "I hope that when the day comes, Canada will be ready."

If water is indeed to become a flashpoint in Canada-U.S. relations, the GREAT LAKES are almost sure to provide the spark. The importance of the lakes to both countries is obvious. They collectively supply drinking water to more than 45 million people and irrigation for a quarter of Canada's agriculture, and they provide the lifeblood of the industrial economies in Ontario, Quebec, New York, Michigan and Illinois. But vast as they are, the lakes are fragile. They were created by receding glaciers, and only about one per cent of their volume is replenished by rainfall each year, which means substantial withdrawals from the system have far-reaching impacts.

Already, the city of Chicago pulls more than two billion gallons of water a day from Lake Michigan and flushes it into a sanitary and shipping channel that drains into the Mississippi River. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has capped the amount of water the city can withdraw, most experts agree little can be done if Chicago decides to increase its take to satisfy a population expected to grow by 30 per cent in the next 20 years. And Chicago isn't the only community clamouring to tap the enormous bounty of the Great Lakes. Several counties that currently straddle the watershed in Wisconsin and Illinois have petitioned to get access to lake water to shore up dwindling groundwater supplies, and environmentalists worry that if they get access, it could open the door to a never-ending escalation of demands from further and further afield.

Provincial and state governments are currently negotiating a deal that would place limits on transfers of water out of the watershed. But even if it is approved, the agreement would be non-binding, and the International Joint Commission that administers border waters has already received a legal opinion saying that the states and provinces do not have the authority to prohibit transfers of water to other parts of the country. Similar demands have recently bubbled up in the West, with U.S. communities demanding greater access to cross-border water supplies, including the Souris, Milk and St. Mary's rivers.

The vulnerability of Canada's southern watersheds was highlighted by the recent Devil's Lake controversy, in which North Dakota diverted potentially dangerous lake water into the Red River system that drains into Manitoba. Canadian officials complained but were ultimately powerless to stop the diversion, which many fear will have serious consequences for the health of Lake Winnipeg. The lesson was that Canada's water systems can only really be protected through co-operation, not litigation. If Canada chooses to fight rather than share, legal experts agree there is little to stop the U.S. from abandoning the border waters treaty. As Adèle Hurley, director of the program on water issues at the Munk Centre for International Studies, has said, "It seems likely that the U.S. will act aggressively to ensure its water security." And if that determination were to result in large-scale diversions from the Great Lakes, or intensive mining of underground aquifers that straddle the border, the effect would be like dozens of giant straws draining the lifeblood of Canada's environment and economy.

Still, the vast majority of Canadians would prefer to keep fighting with tighter controls, and more ironclad assurances that Ottawa will never allow water to flow across the border, rather than facing up to the irresistible forces of supply and demand now shaping the world order in water. Even Lougheed, one of the staunchest proponents of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, recently came out against water trade. "We Canadians should be prepared to respond firmly with a forceful 'No. We need it for ourselves,' " Lougheed wrote.

Many of the objections, however, are based on misinformation. Most Canadians, for example, believe Canada has no water to spare - despite the fact that, of the 18 principal watershed systems in Canada, 15 are currently providing less than 10 per cent of their annual renewable supplies to human uses, according to StatsCan. There is also a widespread belief, fostered by anti-trade activists, that if Canada were to agree to sell any portion of its water, the U.S. could demand unlimited access to the resource under NAFTA. But several legal opinions have debunked this notion. The University of Arizona's Glennon points out that NAFTA and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) both include specific passages allowing countries to limit trade in any good to safeguard threatened ecosystems or to protect human health. Both treaties also state that countries can limit trade to conserve exhaustible natural resources.

Nevertheless, ultra-nationalists like Barlow continue to play on Canadians' fears of losing control and ending up dry. To the critics of water trade, deficits in the rest of the world are simply not Canada's problem to solve. In this country, stories of U.S. water shortages conjure images of golf courses in the desert, and evoke little sympathy. Andrew Nikiforuk, Toronto-based author of Political Diversions: Decision Time on Taking Water from the Great Lakes, and a vocal opponent of water trade, puts it bluntly. "As for the water crisis in the Southwest, tell them to move," he says.

That kind of talk rankles Dr. Dale Devitt, a soft-spoken professor of soil and water at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, who has spent most of his career studying the science behind Nevada's water challenges. He advises the region on ways to conserve water, and is working with companies to find ways to reduce the amount needed to support plant life in the desert. "It's easy for people to criticize and say we don't use our water well," he says. "But people in the north rely on heating oil to survive winter. People in Florida and Louisiana get hit regularly by hurricanes, and in Oklahoma by tornados. Here we have problems with water - but every place has natural challenges to overcome."

As far as Devitt is concerned, water markets are the only way that the profound gaps in water supply will be solved. New technologies in water filtration and desalinization will help, he says, but only by allowing water to flow freely will the world ensure that all those who need water get it, and all those who have it, use it responsibly. "I hope that marketing of water will happen at some point," he says. "Because it's only going to get tougher. If we think things are tight right now, wait 10 or 20 years. It's going to get downright nasty."

To proponents like Devitt, Glennon and Al-Assar, the status quo is as hypocritical as it is unsustainable. If it's okay to use water to irrigate crops that are then shipped across national borders; if it's okay to bottle millions of litres a year for sale in corner stores around the world; if it's okay to divert water to make steel or refine oil that is then shipped across national borders, then why not the water itself?

Pat Mulroy agrees, but she isn't holding her breath waiting for Canadian exports to quench her region's considerable thirst. "People are irrational when it comes to water. They get very emotional about it, and that's not going to change." For now, she and scientists like Devitt keep working to stretch what they have and delay that day of reckoning, when there simply isn't enough water to go around. And while they look to the skies and hope for a little relief, Canada's treasure of Blue Gold stays safely locked away from those who might sell it, and those who might drink it.

Maclean's November 28, 2005

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/us-thirsts-for-canadian-water/

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THE WOLVES (SAVE IT FOR THE FUTURE GENERATIONS)- have had this posted on sites since 2007- my fav my fave

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20SWz2Gf_BY
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The Powered Generation: Canadians, Electricity and everyday life

http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1376&context=etd

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Environmental Data Standards

Data sharing is an important aspect of sound environmental management. Together, States, Tribes, Territories, and EPA face the critical and ongoing challenge of sharing information among themselves, their respective stakeholders, and with the public. Data standards are fundamental to the seamless exchange of data and they help improve the ability of Partners to exchange data efficiently and accurately. They also assist secondary data users understand, interpret, and use data appropriately.
Environmental data standards are documented agreements on representations, formats, and definitions of common environmental data. They improve the quality and share-ability of environmental data by increasing data compatibility, improving the consistency and efficiency of data collection, and reducing data redundancy. They also provide a common vocabulary for citizens, local governments, States, Territories, Tribes, Federal Agencies, and private-sector organizations to communicate about environmental data. More information is available in Data Standards Frequently Asked Questions.
The Exchange Network Leadership Council (ENLC) considers development and adoption of a data standard to improve environmental data sharing among Partners, when there is an environmental management business reason and Partners are ready to lead the development. The ENLC supports development of environmental data standards either through the formation of an ENLC-sponsored IPT or through independent external authorities (e.g., recognized standard-setting bodies, Tribal-State-Federal organization, etc.). The ENLC manages an inclusive Data Standards Life-Cycle Process for developing data standards. The ENLC-approved Exchange Network Environmental Data Standards follow:

http://www.exchangenetwork.net/environmental-data-standards/

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Has Foreign Aid Been Greened?

by J. Timmons Roberts, Bradley C. Parks, Michael J. Tierney, and Robert L. Hicks

Since the first major international conference on environment and development in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972, environmentalists, voters, and policymakers in the developed world have faced a vexing dilemma: with some of the richest stores of biodiversity, natural resources, and carbon located in developing countries, the greatest potential for damage to the global environment resides in places outside the sovereign control of the countries most able, financially speaking, to prevent it.

Developing countries have consistently taken the position that they cannot afford—and should not be asked—to divert large amounts of their own money to environmental protection. They argue that now-wealthy countries achieved high living standards through a resource-intensive industrialization process that often damaged the natural environment and only began to significantly invest in environmental protection at later stages of economic development.

International negotiators have repeatedly pointed to the transfer of financial resources from developed to developing countries as a possible way forward. Articles 2 and 12 of the Stockholm Declaration stated that “additional international technical and financial assistance” should be made available for environmental protection in developing countries. In the negotiations leading up to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, developed and developing nations struck a so-called Grand Bargain whereby wealthy countries agreed to underwrite the participation of less developed countries in global environmental accords. The 1991 Beijing Ministerial Declaration on Environment and Development identified poverty as the primary cause of environmental degradation in the developing world and stated that “a special Green Fund should be established to provide adequate and additional financial assistance” to environmental projects in developing countries.¹

During the Rio Earth Summit, wealthy countries vied in the international media to appear more “environmental” than their peers. The United States promised a 66 percent increase in environmental aid over its 1990 level; 12 members of the European Community promised a $4.3 billion environmental aid package; and Canada pledged $115 million. Japan tried to outbid everyone by offering $7.7 billion in environmental assistance over the next five years.² However, many developing countries feared that this new concern for environmental protection would supplant foreign aid for basic human needs and economic development.

Agenda 21, a 700-page sustainable development plan drawn up jointly by developed and developing countries in the lead-up to the Rio conference, was designed to break this impasse. It sought to bring poor countries into environmental agreements while simultaneously supporting their economic development. Chapter 33 of Agenda 21 stated that “the implementation of the huge sustainable development programs . . . [would] require the provision to developing countries of substantial new and additional financial resources.” The cost of implementing Agenda 21 was estimated at $561.5 billion a year, with developed countries bankrolling $141.9 billion (20 percent of the total cost) in low or no-interest concessional assistance and developing countries footing the rest of the bill.³ Of the assistance to developing countries, about $15 billion a year was supposed to be devoted to global environmental issues, with the rest targeting sustainable development programs like drinking water and sewage treatment in developing countries.⁴

Thirteen years later, in the summer of 2005, the leaders of the G8 countries—the United States, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Russia, and Canada—met at the Gleneagles golf resort in Scotland. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was serving as G8 president, set two priorities for the meeting: for members to agree to “make poverty history” by substantially increasing aid, especially for Africa, and to make more progress on addressing global climate change. Environmental aid was again highlighted to demonstrate developed countries’ commitment to international environmental protection. Under the Gleneagles Plan of Action, the G8 made promises to help poor countries access clean energy technologies more readily. Yet after only three and a half years, it appears Gleneagles may be Rio all over again. Besides being almost an exact repetition of promises made in 1992, the Gleneagles declarations were very similar to those made at the first Earth Summit held in Stockholm 33 years before.

Despite repeated promises of aid to address critical global and local environmental problems, little systematic research exists on whether donors have honored their commitments. Claims of greening are often made by the World Bank and other big multilateral banks and by bilateral aid agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.K. Department for International Development (DFID), or Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (German Technical Cooperation). However, with very incomplete datasets and inconsistent categorization of projects, it has been impossible to answer the most basic questions about whether the aid prescribed at Rio is being administered appropriately.

In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that “data are simply not collected and analyzed in a manner that informs policy makers interested in the issue.”⁵ The European Commission noted in 2006 that their “statistical system does not enable an environmental analysis of aid flows” and “there is no generally accepted definition of an ‘environmental project’ or of the environmental component of an integrated development/environment project.”⁶ A decade earlier, the same point had been made by political scientists Barbara Connolly, Tamar L. Gutner, and Hildegard Berdarff: “Available data are highly distorted by the lack of any common definition of what is or is not ‘environmental assistance.’”⁷

While scholars and policy analysts have produced a number of books and articles on the topic of environmental aid to developing countries, much of this research is based on qualitative case studies or small samples. Our collective knowledge remains limited largely due to the lack of comprehensive and reliable data on aid projects from bilateral and multilateral donors—data that are necessary for researchers to empirically evaluate competing hypotheses. As a result, we lack credible, cross-country evidence that can provide generalizable answers to some of the key questions that concern the academic, environmental, and policy communities:⁸
• Has aid been greened and, if so, by how much?
• Which donor governments spend the most on foreign assistance for the environment and why?
• Why do some donor governments delegate the allocation and implementation of environmental aid to multilateral agencies when they could simply allocate it themselves?
• Which countries receive the most environmental assistance and why?

To answer these questions, in 2003, researchers at the College of William and Mary and Brigham Young University launched the Project-Level Aid (PLAID) data collection initiative.⁹ The first version of the PLAID database covers 1970–2000 and contains approximately 427,000 individual development projects funded by grants and loans from wealthy countries to poor countries.

Previous work on aid allocation has relied on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Creditor Reporting System database, where the aid categories assigned to each project are determined by the donor country or multilateral agency. However, there are serious problems with using these data to examine such questions. For example, the project coding was inconsistent, and some projects were categorized using criteria developed for other purposes. In addition, important donors were missing from the dataset.

The PLAID initiative filled existing gaps by adding development projects from donor agencies that do not report to the OECD. Each project in the PLAID database was then categorized according to its likely environmental impact by two PLAID researchers. (When there was disagreement between two researchers on the nature of a project, which happened infrequently, the project was referred to senior researchers for a final decision.) As shorthand, projects expected to have damaging environmental effects are referred to as “dirty.”¹⁰ Each project was assigned one of five values, from the most environmentally beneficial to the least: Environmental Strictly Defined, Environmental Broadly Defined, Neutral, Dirty Broadly Defined, and Dirty Strictly Defined.¹¹ (The sidebar below describes each of these categories.) The projects coded as environmental are further divided into two categories: “green” projects, which are designed to address global environmental problems such as biodiversity loss and transboundary air pollution, and “brown” projects, which address local environmental problems such as land erosion, sewer systems, and water pollution. The coding scheme allowed the initiative to do what has never been done before: consistently evaluate projects across all 61 donors and over the two decades (the 1980s and 1990s) when the data was the most complete and reliable.¹²

Major Trends

During the first three decades of the post-World War II era, foreign aid played a central role in financing the heavy-duty infrastructure of development—roads, mines, dams, mechanization of agriculture, lumber mills, and colonization schemes. But in the mid-1980s, the political landscape changed significantly in many industrialized countries: a firestorm of protest exploded when environmentalists discovered the World Bank’s role in funding environmental disasters in the Brazilian Amazon and Indonesia’s Sarawak rainforest.¹³ Conservation International and a network of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) brought indigenous people and Brazilian rubber-tappers before the U.S. Congress to explain how the bank’s actions were destroying their civilization and livelihoods and the forests that supported them.¹⁴ The U.S. Senate threatened to withhold the bank’s funding replenishments, and Congress went on to pass the Pelosi Amendment to the 1989 International Development and Finance Act, which required multilateral development banks to create environmental departments and conduct environmental impact assessments for any project with the potential to cause significant environmental damage.

Collecting and categorizing data on 427,000 projects suggests that aid has greened over these 20 years, but only partially, and certainly not to the level promised by donors at previous summits. The descriptive statistics reported in Figures 1 (right) and 2 (below) suggest that most bilateral and multilateral aid agencies have responded to critiques by environmentalists and threats and sanctions from the legislatures that fund them. From 1980 to the end of the twentieth century, environmental aid increased substantially, from roughly $3 billion a year to about $10 billion a year (Figure 1). In all, $61.9 billion in environmental assistance flowed from donor governments to recipient countries during the 1980s and 1990s, out of $735.2 billion in total bilateral assistance, 8.4 percent of all bilateral aid over the two decades. Bilateral environmental assistance increased from a total of $5.8 billion for all donors in the first five years of the 1980s to $27.4 billion in the late 1990s. Multilateral agencies like the World Bank committed approximately $10 billion in environmental grants and loans in the early 1980s, nearly tripling that to $28 billion in the late 1990s.

Between 1982 and 1992, bilateral donors also scaled back their support for projects that were likely to damage the environment, from about 45 percent of bilateral aid in most of the 1980s to about 20 percent a year at the end of the 1990s.¹⁵ Creating a ratio of dirty aid to environmental aid lends further support to the argument that there has been a major shift in the environmental composition of aid (see Figure 3 below). It also shows that bilateral aid agencies greened more quickly and thoroughly than multilateral agencies. At the beginning of the 1980s, dirty projects received roughly 10 times as much funding as pro-environment projects. But by the end of the 1990s, the ratio was about three to one. Case studies of USAID, DFID, and the Danish, German, and Japanese aid agencies shed light on the domestic political factors that encourage bilateral funders to green their aid portfolios.¹⁶ The multilateral development banks also have greened substantially over these pivotal decades but continue to give about four times as much funding to dirty projects as environmental projects (Figure 3).¹⁷ The data show that the ratio of dirty to clean projects stopped declining in 1992—the year of the Rio Earth Summit—through the end of the decade.¹⁸

An important, but underappreciated trend has also surfaced: a massive increase in environmentally neutral projects—those that are on average neither environmental nor dirty. While some of these neutral projects have environmentally positive and negative elements, most are not directly related to environmental outcomes. For example, projects that fund judicial reform initiatives or that provide computer software to school children have no obvious impact on the natural environment. Neutral aid doubled from $20 billion a year in the early 1980s to about $40 billion by the early 1990s and increased to more than $60 billion in the late 1990s.

Were Agenda 21 Promises Met?

Agenda 21 included specific recommendations about how much funding would be needed to address the major issues of the planet’s health, including water and sanitation ($6.1 billion a year), desertification and land degradation ($18.2 billion a year), global climate change ($20 billion a year), and biodiversity loss ($1.75 billion a year). Were these prescribed funds delivered? PLAID environmental coding and keyword searching of project descriptions and titles facilitated the first systematic evaluation of this question. Of these four issues, water and sanitation projects appear to have attracted by far the most environmental funding, with climate change and biodiversity projects increasing substantially (in number and amount) only in the late 1990s (see Figure 4 below). The PLAID data collection effort suggests that the dire problems of desertification and soil erosion have been almost entirely neglected.

In the years following the publication of Agenda 21 (1993–1999), the average annual amount of water aid rose to $5.6 billion—only $500 million short of the original estimated amount needed. By contrast, climate change received just $33.6 million—4 percent of the funding scientists prescribed in Agenda 21 ($840 million a year)—and biodiversity protection received only $8.75 million—7 percent of the amount that was prescribed ($125 million a year). Funding to assist poor countries in combating desertification and other types of land degradation was the most neglected category throughout the 1980s and 1990s: despite continued warnings from the scientific community and staggering estimates of need, only $350 million per year, 2 percent of the funding prescribed at Rio, was delivered in the 1990s.

How Green Are Donors?

Which governments give the most environmental aid? In terms of total dollars sent abroad to protect the environment, the United States was first in the 1980s, giving a total of $3.8 billion. During the 1990s, that amount doubled, to just below $7.6 billion. However, the United States fell to third in total environmental aid during the second half of the 1990s, as Japan’s environmental funding increased fivefold from $3 billion in the 1980s to nearly $15 billion in the 1990s.

Denmark has the distinction of having the greenest aid portfolio of any donor government, giving 13 percent of all its aid to projects categorized as environmental in the last five years of the 1980s and nearly 22 percent during the 1995–1999 period (see Table 1 at left). In per capita terms, Denmark’s environmental aid is unparalleled: in the late 1980s, they gave on average more than $180 per person (see Table 2 below). This amount was well over twice that of the next four donors, who gave between $70 and $85 per person. By 1999, 42 percent of Denmark’s total aid portfolio was earmarked for pro-environment projects, nearly three times that of the next three countries: Germany, Austria, and Sweden (whose environmental funding ranged from 12 to 15 percent in 1999).

Comparing the period 1985–1989 to the period 1995–1999, Germany nearly tripled its environmental giving, from $2.3 billion to $6.7 billion, which meant a doubling of the proportion of its bilateral donations going to the environment, from 7.5 to more than 15 percent. New Zealand, meanwhile, was the only country to reduce the environmental share of its bilateral aid portfolio: channeling 6.6 percent of all bilateral aid to environmental projects in the early 1980s but only 3.7 percent in the late 1990s. Large increases in environmental aid spending over the last 20 years were also documented for the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Denmark. Between 1990 and 1999, the top environmental donors scaled up from $2.9 billion to more than $5 billion a year.¹⁹

Several factors may help explain the greenness of donor portfolios: the level of national wealth; the prevalence of post-materialist values; the strength of domestic and international environmental policy preferences; the power of coalitions of environmental NGOs and environmental technology firms; dirty industry lobbying strength; and domestic political institutions (such as political party strength, corporatist decisionmaking structures, and the number of veto players and checks and balances). Testing this series of factors using multivariate statistical techniques found that the PLAID models better explain the drop in “dirty” aid than the rise in environmental aid. Wealthier countries and those scoring higher on post-materialist survey items seem to invest less in dirty projects but not necessarily more in environmental projects. Countries where environmental NGOs and environmental technology firms are both strong also appear to give less dirty aid and more aid focused on global environmental issues like biodiversity. Finally, as one might expect, countries with higher rates of environmental treaty ratification and compliance also tend to have larger environmental aid budgets.

Who Receives Environmental Aid?

On the recipient side, there are several unsurprising entries—Brazil, India, China, and Indonesia—on the top 10 list of countries that received more than $2 billion in environmental aid during the 1990s (see Figure 5 below). Some of these countries have large stocks of natural capital that the international community would like to protect (Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, for example); others have huge populations and economies that are major contributors to ozone depletion, climate change, and other international environmental threats (such as China and India). But there are also some surprising appearances on the list. For example, it is not immediately obvious why countries like Egypt or Turkey—which have not experienced well-known environmental crises and do not have globally critical biological resources—would receive more than $2 billion in environmental assistance.

In addition, there was considerable variation in the type of environmental assistance from one recipient country to the next. During the late 1990s, Egypt and Turkey—two countries of significant geostrategic importance—received far more funding for locally focused (brown) aid than they did globally oriented (green) aid. However, the least developed countries in the world received far more green aid than brown aid. These descriptive statistics beg many questions about underlying donor motivations and the relative bargaining power of donors and recipients. For example, are major geopolitical players able to negotiate for a higher ratio of environmental aid that directly benefits their local populations, such as water and sewage projects?

Of particular interest to the PLAID research group was assessing whether environmental assistance is allocated differently than other types of foreign assistance. That is, is environmental aid channeled to military allies, geostrategic partners, and key trading partners, or are donors concerned with the environmental rate-of-return they receive on their aid investment? Here again, several factors may explain interrecipient environmental aid allocation patterns, including global environmental significance; regional (environmental) significance; the severity of local environmental damage; the level of participation in international environmental agreements; the transparency and availability of environmental information; and the overall level of human need. Other questions arise as to whether donors favor recipient countries with sound economic policies, strong public institutions, and democratic credentials, and whether a recipient’s political loyalty to a donor, existing commercial relationships with a donor, or former colonial ties have any impact on the amount of environmental aid it received.

Multivariate statistical techniques used to evaluate a series of such factors did find some evidence that environmental aid is allocated according to eco-functional criteria. In other words, some donors appear to be targeting countries where they think their environmental aid might have a better chance of actually ameliorating serious environmental problems. But many of the political, commercial, and historical factors that are identified in the broader literature on foreign aid allocation also appear to influence environmental aid. In fact, the overall impact of most eco-functional variables is small when compared with the more traditional determinants of foreign aid allocation, such as a recipient country’s existing bilateral commercial relationship with a donor country and previous colonial ties to the donor country. This finding is important, as a growing body of evidence suggests that the way aid is allocated influences its ultimate effectiveness. Researchers and practitioners generally agree that aid allocated along political lines has a worse chance of leading to better development outcomes than aid allocated according to need and government commitment to good policy.²⁰

Future Directions

With continued warnings of environmental crisis and repeated promises of action, many observers have become cynical about the prospects for significant cooperation on environmental issues among developed and developing countries. However, the evidence seems to show that the international community had it right back in Stockholm in 1972: development assistance, when allocated and implemented properly, can be an important tool for promoting international environmental cooperation and addressing local environmental issues in the world’s poorest countries.

The overall picture that emerges from the PLAID database is that aid has partially greened but certainly not to the level promised by donors at previous summits. From 1980 to the end of the twentieth century, environmental aid increased substantially in absolute and relative terms; environmentally neutral aid increased by an even greater margin; and dirty aid declined in relative terms, while remaining virtually unchanged in absolute terms. Breaking down environmental aid into four major sectors revealed that water and sanitation projects attract the most environmental funding, with climate change and biodiversity project commitments increasing substantially (in numbers and amounts) only in the late 1990s. Financing for green projects—that is, those that deal with global public goods by addressing, for example, biodiversity or climate change—increased from just 1 percent of total aid during the whole of the 1980s to around 3 percent in the 1990s. Green aid’s share of total environmental aid has grown; throughout much of the 1980s, it accounted for about 17 percent of environmental aid, and by the mid to late 1990s, this figure had reached about 27 percent.

The research presented here also draws attention to a simple but very important point about accountability: without independent categorization and evaluation of donor commitments at the project level, it is extremely difficult to monitor what donors are doing in the environmental sector. Influential political groups in many donor countries exert pressure on their governments to reduce aid for environmentally damaging projects and increase aid for environmental cleanup. Such pressure can create incentives for policymakers to overrepresent the amount of environmental aid they give so as to look and sound as green as possible.

The value of an independent, project-level aid database became evident in an evaluation of the United Kingdom’s development agency. Comparing PLAID coding for what constitutes an environmental project with DFID’s Policy Information Marker System for the same projects revealed a stark divergence of claims. DFID claimed that environmental projects accounted for 25 percent of its bilateral aid in the 1990s, while PLAID’s analysis suggests the actual number is probably closer to 10 percent.

When these types of accounting differences are viewed within the context of the huge promises that donors have made to ramp up environmental spending at international summits, the need for a credible mechanism that independently monitors whether donors are honoring their commitments becomes obvious. What do these public commitments mean if there is no agreement or mechanism to track them? The PLAID database begins to address that problem.

The future will likely bring a growing focus on global climate change among major bilateral and multilateral donors. There is broad agreement that the key challenge to securing an effective global climate agreement among developed and developing countries will be to enlist the support and active participation of the latter. Many developing countries are highly vulnerable to the effects of global warming but see the need to fuel their economic growth with cheaper—and dirtier—sources of energy. As such, if developing countries are going to actively participate in a global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions, they will almost certainly need significant assistance making the transition from high-carbon to low-carbon energy technologies and adapting to the worst effects of climate change.²¹ According to the latest UN Framework Convention on Climate Change estimates, by 2030, $100 billion a year will be needed to finance mitigation activities and $28–$67 billion a year to finance adaptation activities in the developing world. Even with major new sources of funding from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the Adaptation Fund (financed by a 2 percent tax on CDM transactions), and the proposed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation mechanism, there will still be a major role for official assistance, as market mechanisms will likely not channel money to all areas of need, and funding may be too slow or unpredictable.

Finally, in addition to the aid allocation issues dealt with here, the PLAID database provides an extremely valuable resource for those interested in evaluating the effectiveness of aid. The existing literature on aid effectiveness has focused on the relationship between total aid flows—including support for peacekeeping, landmine clearance, free and fair elections, civil society, biodiversity protection, HIV/AIDS, anti-drug trafficking efforts, and refugees—and causally distant or unrelated outcomes, such as economic growth and infant mortality. However, there is a growing consensus that such research probably obscures more than it reveals.²² Biodiversity aid is not designed to accelerate short-term economic growth, nor is renewable energy assistance intended to reduce infant mortality. Well-designed assessments of aid effectiveness should therefore evaluate the impact that specific types of aid have on more specific social, economic, political, and environmental outcomes. For example, with the PLAID database, researchers can now unbundle environmental aid into its constituent parts and study the relationships between biodiversity aid and species loss, climate adaptation assistance and human vulnerability to hydro-meteorological disasters, and land degradation aid and soil fertility.

Although the specific social and economic goals identified in Agenda 21 (such as combating poverty, changing consumption patterns, and protecting and promoting human health) involve interconnected problems and target very different outcomes, aid’s ability to contribute to these outcomes is best measured separately.

We hope that PLAID will inspire a new generation of research on the effectiveness of aid, including the impact of environmental aid on environmental protection. A broad range of stakeholders, including donor agencies, legislative overseers, advocacy groups, and beneficiaries in recipient countries stand to benefit from such research.

J. Timmons Roberts is a professor of sociology and past director of the Environmental Science and Policy Program at the College of William and Mary. In 2006–2007 he was a James Martin 21st Century Professor at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute. His research interests include globalization, development and social change, environmental sociology, and urban and community sociology. He may be reached at jtrobe@wm.edu.

Bradley C. Parks is an associate director in the Department of Policy and International Relations at the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Washington, DC. He has written and contributed to several books and articles on global environmental politics, international political economy, and development theory and practice. He may be reached at parksbc@mcc.gov.

Michael J. Tierney is an associate professor of government and the director of the International Relations Program at the College of William and Mary. His research and teaching interests focus on international organizations, international relations theory, political economy, and development. He may be reached at mjtier@wm.edu.

Robert L. Hicks is an associate professor of economics at the College of William and Mary. His research interests include environmental and natural resource economics, development economics, and econometrics. He may be reached at rlhick@wm.edu.

An extended version of these arguments and more extensive evidence is presented in Greening Aid? Understanding the Environmental Impact of Development Assistance (Oxford University Press, 2008). The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
NOTES

1. “Beijing Ministerial Declaration on Environment and Development,” adopted by 41 developing countries at the Ministerial Conference of Developing Countries on Environment and Development, Beijing, 19 June 1991. See also H. Sjöberg, Restructuring the Global Environment Facility, Global Environment Facility (GEF) Working Paper 13 (Washington, DC: GEF, 1999), http://thegef.org/Outreach/outreach-Publications/WP13-Restructuring_the_GEF.pdf (accessed 6 November 2008).
2. R. Hicks, B. C. Parks, J. T. Roberts, and M. J. Tierney, Greening Aid? Understanding the Environmental Impact of Development Assistance (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008), 124. Upon closer inspection of the aid increase promised by Japan, it appeared only to include an increase over existing levels of about $500 million per year. See P. Lewis, “Pact on Environment Near, But Hurdles on Aid Remain,” New York Times, 12 June 1992.
3. United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 3–14 June 1992, Section 4, Chapter 33, http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=78&ArticleID=1163 (accessed 28 October 2008).
4. According to N. A. Robinson, ed., Agenda 21 and UNCED Proceedings. Vol. 1 and 2 (New York: Oceana Publications, 1992), concessional financing under Agenda 21 was more than $125 billion, of which $15 billion was to address global issues.
5. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2001: A Synthesis Report (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
6. European Commission, Environment Directorate-General of the European Commission, 2006, http://ec.europa.eu/environment (accessed 15 June 2007).
7. B. Connolly, T. L. Gutner, and H. Berdarff, “Organizational Inertia and Environmental Assistance in Eastern Europe,” in R. O. Keohane and M. A. Levy, Institutions for Environmental Aid: Pitfalls and Promise, 281–323 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 286.
8. Cross-country patterns of environmental aid allocation have significant implications for the alleviation of local, regional, and global environmental problems. For example, if donors target recipient countries with sound policies and institutions and the potential to deliver significant environmental benefits, there is good reason to believe that such assistance will be put to more productive use.
9. The goal of the Project-Level Aid (PLAID) research project is to collect and standardize data on every individual development assistance project committed by official donors since 1970. The forthcoming PLAID 2.0, which updates the time series through 2006, includes more bilateral and multilateral donors and fills in gaps where new data have become available. To do so, the project has recently received generous support from the National Science Foundation (#SES-0454384), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For more information about the PLAID database, see http://irtheoryandpractice.wm.edu/projects/plaid/ (accessed 10 December 2008).
10. The PLAID coding rules disregard the humanitarian dimensions of projects: a project’s potentially positive overall impact on a recipient country’s populations is analytically distinct from a project’s environmental impact.
11. The environmental coding scheme is designed to capture the expected environmental impact of projects—not the actual environmental impact of projects. It is understood that some “environmental” projects may not deliver significant environmental benefits, and that donors can make course corrections during project implementation and modify “dirty” and “neutral” projects.
12. Because donor organizations have their own criteria for identifying and counting what is environmental aid (and these criteria often change over time within a given organization), it is difficult to make comparisons across donors or over time.
13. In addition to its problems in Brazil and Indonesia, the World Bank was also widely criticized for its involvement in huge dam projects that displaced millions of people and flooded sensitive lands. For example, see S. Schwartzman, Bankrolling Disasters: International Development Banks and the Global Environment: A Citizen’s Guide to the Multilateral Development Banks (Washington, DC: Sierra Club, 1985).
14. I. A. Bowles and C. F. Kormos, “The American Campaign for Environmental Reforms at the World Bank,” The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 23, no. 1 (1999): 211–25; and D. L. Nielson and M. J. Tierney, “Delegation to International Organizations: Agency Theory and World Bank Environmental Reform,” International Organization 57, no. 2 (2003): 241–76.
15. In inflation-adjusted, year 2000 dollars, environmentally damaging aid remained relatively unchanged at around $30 billion a year at the end of the 1990s.
16. Hicks, Parks, Roberts, and Tierney, note 2, chapter 5.
17. Multilateral environmental aid is a highly concentrated sector; 90 percent of such assistance comes from just five agencies: the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Union, and GEF. The World Bank alone gave $38 billion in environmental aid over the 1980s and 1990s, in addition to the nearly $3 billion of GEF funding the bank administered.
18. A limitation of the PLAID study is that it did not address the “marbling,” or mainstreaming, of environmental aid into larger projects. Several studies suggest that marbled environmental assistance represents a significant amount of total environmental assistance at the World Bank. For example, see Nielson and Tierney, note 12. However, research has found that that mainstreamed environmental funding at the World Bank has not increased significantly. In fact, between 2000 and 2006, mainstreamed environmental funding actually declined—from about 12 percent to 10 percent of each project. Yet during the same period, environment-themed bank publications have increased from 4 percent of all bank publications to approximately 32 percent of all bank publications. See R. M. Powers and M. J. Tierney, “A New Measure of Environmental Aid: Measuring Environmental Mainstreaming at the World Bank,” paper prepared for the International Studies Association Conference, New York, 15–17 March 2009.
19. Beyond the bilateral funding, a similar amount was being pumped through multilateral agencies like the World Bank, the UN Development Programme, and the EU Technical Aid to the Commonwealth of Independent States fund.
20. P. Collier and D. Dollar, “Development Effectiveness: What Have We Learnt?” Economic Journal 114, no. 6 (2004): 244–71.
21. J. T. Roberts and B. C. Parks, A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).
22. For example, see M. Clemens, S. Radelet, and R. Bhavnani, “Counting Chickens When They Hatch: The Short-Term Effect of Aid on Growth,” Center for Global Development Working Paper 44 (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2004).

Project-Level Aid (PLAID) Database Project Categories

PLAID categorizes specific projects based on their published project titles and descriptions, rather than assuming entire sectors are homogenous. Many development agencies’ sector coding can be highly misleading because very different projects are often lumped under the same sector heading, which offers a skewed picture of donor agencies’ actual spending patterns and priorities. For example, in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Creditor Reporting System database (to which major bilateral donors report), sustainable forestry and selective logging receive the same sector code as clear-cutting deforestation projects. For scholars interested in the impact of foreign aid on the environment, such distinctions are vital, and PLAID data highlight these differences.

Each project in the PLAID database is classified according to whether it would likely have a positive, negative, or negligible impact on the natural environment. In addition, the environmental projects are divided into two types of projects—“green” (which address global issues like climate change) and “brown” (which address local environmental problems like water pollution). The overall categories are defined as follows:

• Environmental Strictly Defined projects have an immediate positive impact on the environment with clear, measurable goals and criteria for success. Examples include biodiversity protection, renewable energy, soil conservation, watershed protection, reforestation, access to clean water, and air pollution mitigation.
• Environmental Broadly Defined projects include those that have less definable, longer-range environmental effects than the Environmental Strictly Defined projects have or are preventative in nature. Examples include energy efficiency, industrial reforestation, family planning, desalinization, and genetic diversity projects.
• Neutral projects include those projects that have no immediate or direct environmental impact and projects with positive and negative effects that roughly balance out or are minimally damaging. Examples include projects designed to fund health, education, telecommunications, disaster relief, free trade promotion, balance of payments support, small and medium enterprise assistance, or export promotion.
• Dirty Broadly Defined projects are those that have a moderate or long-term negative impact on the environment, including agriculture (not including erosion control), biotechnology, electricity generation and distribution, engineering, forestry, hydroelectric power, and mass transportation projects.
• Dirty Strictly Defined projects may strip the environment of irreplaceable natural resources, as in the case of extractive industries (such as mining or logging), or severely pollute or degrade the environment, with immediate measurable negative impacts; examples include road and air transport as well as heavy industry (such as fertilizer, tire, and brick-making factories).

http://www.environmentmagazine.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/January-February%202009/RobertsParksTierneyHicks-full.html

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Canada's growing population and its environmental influence, 1956 to 2006

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Nancy Hofmann
Introduction
Canada's population continues to grow…
The population and its influence on the environment
Conclusion

Introduction

Humanity's impact on the environment is complex—affluence and technology affect how we interact with our natural environment.^1,2 Human population growth—the focus of this analysis, is another important factor. The more people there are, the larger the potential impact on the environment. In this analysis, we look at the influence of population on the environment. Future articles in this bulletin will examine the implications of affluence and technology in more detail.
This analysis presents data on Canadian population growth from 1956 to 2006. To illustrate how our growing population has an influence on the environment, the paper also looks at the number of road motor vehicles registered over time, one example of how population growth, combined with growing affluence and technological change have influenced our environment.

Canada's population continues to grow…

In 2006, approximately 6.5 billion people lived on the planet, up considerably from the 2.8 billion in 1956 (+130%). At a national level, Canada's population growth has risen at a slower pace than the global average. Between 1956 and 2006, Canada's population almost doubled from 16 million to 31.6 million people (Chart 1).
The highest growth rates occurred in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Chart 2). During the baby boom years of the fifties and sixties, increased fertility, lower death rates and increased immigration levels helped to increase Canada's population growth.³ The post-baby boom decline in fertility and the increase in deaths due to population aging have both played a role in slowing the pace of population growth substantially.⁴

Chart 1
Population in Canada, 1956 to 2006

Chart 2
Canadian population growth rates, 5-year periods, 1956 to 2006

Most of the population increase in the last half-century occurred in Ontario, but rates of growth were strongest in parts of northern and western Canada

Over the last fifty years, population growth varied widely from province to province. Ontario experienced the largest absolute growth between 1956 and 2006, with the population rising by approximately 6.8 million people, almost 45% of the gain for the entire country. With 2.9 million more people in 2006 than in 1956, Quebec ranked second overall in terms of absolute gains. British Columbia and Alberta followed with increases of 2.7 million and 2.2 million people respectively.
In terms of rates of growth, the three territories, followed by British Columbia and Alberta had the largest increases (Chart 3). The population in the north more than tripled over the last half-century and there were substantial increases in British Columbia and Alberta as well.

Chart 3
Population growth rates, Canada, provinces and territories, 1956 to 2006

The growth rate was lowest in Saskatchewan, where population rose by only 10%. Other provinces with relatively low rates included Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In recent years, these four provinces experienced declines in population. For example, in Newfoundland and Labrador, the population dropped by 7% between 1996 and 2001—the largest provincial five-year decline.

Top of Page

The population and its influence on the environment

Every day, Canadians engage in activities that place pressures on the environment. Some environmental impacts are more proportional to population growth while others are less so. For instance, drinking water consumption typically rises proportionally with population. However, water use for residential, commercial and industrial purposes can increase at higher rates than population as a result of increased economic activity.
Transportation's impact on the environment is not strictly proportional to population, but also affected by affluence and technology. Below is an illustration of the influence of population growth on the use of road motor vehicles, such as cars, trucks, minivans, sport utility vehicles, buses, and motorcycles.

Effects of population growth—more people mean more road vehicles

Driving has many environmental impacts, including air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, the use of raw materials and energy to manufacture cars, and the loss of wildlife habitat to develop road networks. With increases in Canada's population, there has been an expansion in the number of vehicles on the road. This, in turn, has increased pressure on the environment.
Between 1956 and 2006 the number of vehicles in Canada increased by 15.8 million, while the population grew by about 15.5 million people (Chart 4). In terms of growth rates, the number of motor vehicles increased by 370%, well in excess of population growth (97%).

Chart 4
Population and road motor vehicle registration growth, Canada, 1956 to 2006

The national growth in cars and trucks outpaced population growth particularly during the late fifties, sixties and early seventies, when the 5-year growth rates of vehicle registrations were at least 15 percentage points higher than the growth rates for population (Chart 5). In recent years, there has been more similar growth in both population and vehicle registrations.

Chart 5
Population and road motor vehicle registration growth rates, Canada, 5-year percentage change, 1956 to 2006

Ontario had the largest fifty-year growth in both population and vehicles. The southern portion of the province is also well-known for its transportation-related air pollution problems. For instance, between 1990 and 2004, southern Ontario had the highest concentrations and fastest rise of ground-level ozone⁵ in the country.⁶
However, in terms of growth rates, Ontario's vehicle registrations increased slower than the national rate, but population grew faster than the national rate (Chart 6). The fastest growth rates in both population and vehicles occurred in the territories, followed by Alberta.

Chart 6
Population and road motor vehicle registration growth rates, Canada and provinces/territories, 1956 to 2006

From the postwar era onwards, vehicle ownership rates were spurred on by relatively low prices for vehicles and gasoline, and improved road systems such as expressways. Technological advances including efficiencies in manufacturing processes, including mechanized assembly lines, assisted in reducing the cost of automobiles. Socio-economic factors such as higher household incomes, smaller-sized households, and more women in the workforce meant that more Canadian families could afford to buy and operate vehicles.⁷
The rate of growth of vehicle registrations began to decline in the latter half of the 1970s (Chart 5). One possible reason for this was that the number of vehicles per household was approaching saturation—there are only so many vehicles that Canadian households need or want. For instance, in 1956, there were just under four persons per vehicle in Canada. By 1976, the number of persons per vehicle declined to under two, and has remained between 1.5 and 2 persons per vehicle ever since.
More specifically, in 2006, 83% of Canadian households owned or leased a motor vehicle. Almost half of households with cars or trucks reported having one, whereas 39% reported having two and the remaining 12% reported having 3 or more.⁸ Another possible reason for the slower growth in vehicle registration was the rising costs related to purchasing and operating a vehicle.
A future article will discuss how technology can help offset environmental impacts. Advances in technology related to vehicles and fuels have led to decreased emissions from road transportation. Between 1990 and 2005, nitrogen oxides emitted from road vehicles decreased 39%, while volatile organic compounds (VOC) decreased 60%.⁹ However, even with technological improvements, from 1990 to 2005, greenhouse gas emissions from road transportation increased 33% to 135 Mt of CO2 equivalent.¹⁰

Conclusion

Over the last fifty years, Canada's population has doubled. This increase in population has had environmental consequences. However, numerous other factors also influence Canadians' impact on the environment, which makes determining the influence of population growth more challenging. Population growth is an important piece of the puzzle for understanding our impact on the environment; however, it must be considered in conjunction with the other pieces.

Footnotes

In the early 1970s Ehrlich and Holdren devised a simple equation, in dialogue with Commoner, identifying three factors that created environmental impact. Thus, impact (I) was expressed as the product of population (P), affluence (A), and technology (T). (See Chertow, 2001).
Marion Chertow, 2001, "The IPAT Equation and Its Variants: Changing Views of Technology and Environmental Impact," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Vol. 4, p. 13-29. mitpress.mit.edu/journals/pdf/jiec_4_4_13_0.pdf (accessed May 15, 2007).
Statistics Canada, 2007, Portrait of the Canadian Population in 2006, 2006 Census, Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 97-550-XIE, www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/analysis/popdwell/pdf/97-550-XIE2006001.pdf (accessed May 14, 2007).
Statistics Canada, Portrait of the Canadian Population in 2006.
Human activities contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone by increasing the concentrations of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds. Road motor vehicles are a key source of these two pollutants.
Environment Canada, Statistics Canada and Health Canada, 2006, Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators 2006, Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 16-251-XWE, Ottawa.
Statistics Canada, 2006, Human Activity and the Environment: Annual Statistics, Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 16-201-XIE, /pub/16-201-x/16-201-x2006000-eng.pdf (accessed April 23, 2006).
Statistics Canada, 2007, Households and the Environment, 2006, Catalogue no. 11-526-XIE, Ottawa.
Environment Canada, 2007, Criteria Air Contaminants, www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/cac/Emissions1990-2015/emissions_e.cfm (accessed May 17, 2007).
Environment Canada, 2007, National Inventory Report: Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada, 1990-2005, Greenhouse Gas Division, Ottawa, Ontario.

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A note to the world’s environmental community on the eve of the 140th anniversary of the Metre Convention

Posted on: 6 April 2015
By: Lance McKee

World Metrology Day, 20 May, is an annual celebration of the Metre Convention on 20 May 1875. The signing of an agreement by representatives of seventeen nations at that Convention set the framework for global collaboration in the science of measurement for use in industrial, commercial and societal applications. The original aim of the Metre Convention – the world-wide uniformity of measurement – remains as important today as it was in 1875. Now, to leverage the benefits of uniform measurement in the digital age, we need to take the next step.

I like the logo of the BIPM-OIML Resource Center on the World Metrology Day website:

Fresh from editing the recently announced OGC white paper, “Information Technology Standards for Sustainable Development”, I can’t help wanting to wrap the BIP-OIML Resource Center’s logo in symbols for communication:

The whole purpose of measurement is communication about quantities. When you have measured something – CO2 in the air, for example – you have taken the first step. When you preserve that measurement in a record (or feed it into a data stream), you have taken the second step, which is to make that data available to someone else. When you publish that record on the Internet in an open standard encoding with universally discoverable, readable and actionable information about who, what, when, where, how and why the sample was collected you have taken a step into the 21st century: You have made that sample part of an integrated global “common operating picture”, useful for studying and managing CO2. Due to the multiplier factor of providing the data as part of the global information infrastructure and by encoding and publishing that datum in an open standard way, the datum becomes far more valuable. The more that datum is used, now and in the future, the more valuable it becomes.

The OGC Observations & Measurements (O&M) Encoding Standard (now also an ISO standard) is an essential standard in the the OGC’s Sensor Web Enablement suite of standards. In developing O&M, OGC members relied on the BIPM/ISO 1993 International Vocabulary of Basic and General Terms in Metrology for its rigorous descriptions of measurements and for background on the philosophy of measurement. SWE standards establish a common language for communicating about what measurements are taken, and where, and they provide for specification of any of BIPM’s relevant International System of Units (SI) standards or alternative national standards. Other OGC standards establish a common language for communicating about where things are located, and they provide for specification of BIPM’s SI distance and geometry standards or alternative national distance and geometry standards.

Computers require specificity in the naming and ordering of data elements. To make data universally discoverable, accessible and actionable it is necessary to use universal encoding standards that provide that specificity. Also, the flow of digital data (including environmental data, of course) and digital instructions inside computing machines and between computing machines depends on a corresponding framework of service interface standards that “know” how to read and write data that are so encoded.

Key members of the hydrology, meteorology, climatology and geology communities came together inside and outside the OGC to create international open standards and best practices for encoding their particular kinds of geoscientific data. Earth phenomena of any type are causally connected. These experts working in collaboration have defined and are defining new OGC standards, profiles of existing OGC standards, and best practices to make their data communications consistent with respect to space and time and systems of measurement. They used the OGC forum and process to tap into expertise in geospatial technology, data modeling, and the Internet and Web infrastructure. All their data has a spatial component, so these four environmental standards working groups benefited and continue to benefit from close contact with other working groups in the OGC that focus on standards for Earth imaging, GIS, sensor webs, urban 3D models, Augmented Reality, linked computer models, etc. By doing their work in the OGC, they also had (and still have!) the opportunity to make their requirements known to the Information Technology companies they depend on. In addition, they were able to use the OGC’s Communication and Outreach Program to be sure their work is well known and well vetted by interested experts outside the OGC and around the world.

Thousands of years ago, in places around the world, standards for measuring and accounting (and standards for money and writing) marked the beginning of cooperation on a grand scale – civilization. The world’s current civilizations are growing and struggling toward a workable and sustainable existence together on a planet of limited natural resources and civilization-stressing climate changes. This challenge calls for a new regime of standards that support cooperative Earth stewardship on a grand scale. One necessary condition for success is rapid development of standards that will underpin not only geoscience research, but also Environmental Accounting.

The Metre Convention 140 years ago ushered in an unprecedented period of discovery, invention and commerce. Discovery, invention and commerce are still growing, and it’s clear now that the growth, and its associated environmental impacts, are exponential. Now we need international standards working groups who will usher in an unprecedented period of Earth stewardship. Earth stewardship on a grand scale requires Environmental Accounting, and Environmental Accounting requires standard encodings for environmental data.
http://www.opengeospatial.org/blog/2338
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BLOGGED:

CANADA MILITARY NEWS- April 6/15 Hey Canadians lets hug our troops close and just make Canada great- USA CHINA IMF OWN WORLD ECONOMY… so let’s just make our Nature’s last home on this planet, our Canada, totally self-sufficient like our forefathers/mothers did

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2015/04/canada-military-news-2015-love-our.html

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Canada Population 2015

Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area and the largest North American country. Canada extends from the Pacific to the Atlantic and north to the Arctic Ocean. The United States-Canadian border is the longest land border in the world. In 2015, Canada has an estimated population of 35.87 million, which ranks 37th in the world.

Canada Population 2015

A census was conducted in Canada on 10 May 2011. Preliminary figures released on 8 February 2012 showed that the officially recorded population of Canada was 33,476,688. Today, Canada has an estimated population of 35.87 million. Canada is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world, with much of its land inhospitable. The country's population density is just 3 people per square kilometer (8/square mile), which ranks 228th in the world.

Rapid Population Growth

As you can see from the chart, Canada's population has tripled since the 1940s, growing from 11 million at the time of the second world war to well over 35 million today.
Population growth has been fairly consistent over the past fifty years and shows no sign of slowing. Between the last census in 2006 and 2011, the number of people in Canada increased by an impressive 5.9%.
Canada's growth is fueled largely by immigration. In fact, relative to its size, Canada is the largest importer of human capital in the G8, attracting even more immigrants per capita than the USA. Natural population growth, by contrast, accounts for only around a tenth of Canada's overall population increase each year.
Given the large geographical area of Canada and its relative affluence, it is likely that its population will continue to grow rapidly for decades to come, leading some to speculate as to what a Canada of 100 million people might look like, and whether increased population combined with unrivaled access to natural resources would make Canada a global superpower.

Canada's Population by Province and Territory

The census results also show the population of each Canadian province and territory. More than half of Canadians live in just two provinces; Ontario, where one in three Canadians live, and Quebec where almost a quarter of Canadians live. The combined population of Canada's three territories (Northwest, Yukon and Nunavut) is less than the population of Canada's smallest province (Prince Edward Island).

Rank	Province/Territory	Abbreviation	Population (2011)
Ontario	ON	12,851,821	38.4%
Quebec	QC	7,903,001	23.6%
British Columbia	BC	4,400,057	13.1%
Alberta	AB	3,645,257	10.9%
Manitoba	MB	1,208,268	3.6%
Saskatchewan	SK	1,033,381	3.1%
Nova Scotia	NS	921,727	2.8%
New Brunswick	NB	751,171	2.2%
Newfoundland and Labrador	NL	514,536	1.5%
Prince Edward Island	PE	140,204	0.4%
Northwest Territories	NT	41,462	0.1%
Yukon	YT	33,897	0.1%
Nunavut	NU	31,906	0.1%

Largest Cities in Canada

The largest city in Canada by population is Toronto, home to 2,615,060 people at the time of the 2011 census. The wider Toronto metropolitan area is over twice as populous, containing 5,583,064 people in total.
Canada's second largest city is Montreal in Quebec, where 1,649,519 people live, followed in third place by Calgary in Alberta with 1,096,833. Calgary is growing at twice the Canadian average, however, so if current trends continue it will no doubt overhaul Montreal at some point. Ottawa is Canada's fourth largest city – 883,391 people live in the capital city.

Canada Population Density

As you can see from the map, the majority of Canadians live in a narrow Southern belt along the border with the United States.
There are two main reasons for this.
The first, and most important, is that the most hospitable part of Canadian territory is in the south. Summers are warm and winters are not too harsh, making the area suitable for agriculture. The second reason is the majority of Canada's trade (both import and export) is with its US neighbor, and it makes sense for the majority of Canadians to live as close to the US border as possible.
Canada as a whole has a population density of just 3.41 people per square kilometer (8.3/square mile), which makes it the 228th most densely populated country. Canada is also the second largest country after Russia in terms of size, and the 4th largest in terms of land area. The population density is among the lowest in the world, mostly because a great deal of the country to the north is virtually uninhabited or with very little settlements. Toronto, meanwhile, is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world with a density of 945.4 people per square kilometer.

Canada Demographics

According to the 2011 census, the most common ethnic origins in Canada are: European (77%), Asian (14%), Aboriginal (4%), Black (3%), Latin American (1%), and Multi-racial (0.5%).
32% of Canadians considered their ethnic origin to be Canadian. Other major groups recorded were English (21%), French (15.8%), Scottish (15.1%), Irish (13.9%), German (10.2%) and Italian (4.6%). The largest ethnicities of non-European origin (other than Canadian) were Chinese (4.3%) and First Nations (4.0%). When reading these figures, you should bear in mind that census respondents could select multiple ethnic groups.
Canada's aboriginal people are growing at twice the national rate. While 4% of the population claims an aboriginal identity, another 16% belongs to a non-aboriginal visible minority. More than 20% of the population is now foreign-born, and about 60% of new immigrants come from Asia, particularly China.
English and French are the official languages of Canada. In 2006, 59.7% of Canadians reported that English was their first language and 23.2% reported that French was their first language. The only other language in Canada that is the mother tongue of more than a million people in Chinese. Although there are 11 aboriginal languages, only a few are spoken by enough people to ensure that they are safe from extinction.
Data on religious belief is only collected in every other census. The last data, collected in 2001, indicated that 77% of Candians were Christian (43% Roman Catholic and 29% Protestant), 16.5% had no religion, 2% were Muslim. Other major religious groups were Jewish (1.1%), Buddhist and Hindu (1% each) and Sikh (0.9%).

Canadian Diaspora

An impressive 2.8 million Canadian citizens live outside of Canada itself; that's equivalent to 9% of the overall Canadian population. For comparison, only 1.7% of US citizens live abroad but more than 20% of New Zealanders live abroad.
Around 1 million Canadians live in the United States. The next most popular destination is Hong Kong, where approximately 300,000 Canadians are based. Around 4 in 10 Canadians living abroad were born in Canada, but a larger proportion (6 in 10) are naturalised Canadian citizens who have moved back abroad -- most, but not all, to their country of origin.

Canada Population Growth

Frank Trovato, a professor of population and demography studies at the University of Alberta, told CBS news that Canada's population is "showing that we are growing but not by too much or too little."
As Trovato put it, Canada still needs a robust increase to keep up with demands in the workforce and maintain a strong economy. It may be time for policymakers in the country to consider ways to boost Canada's fertility rates, such as with "family friendly" policies that allow women to combine a family with a career.

Major Cities in Canada
Population Rank 37
% of World Pop 0.51%
Density 3,598

How Many People Live in Canada Right Now?

36,243,342

Canada Population Clock

What is the population of Canada (as of September 17, 2015)?	36,243,342
Last UN Estimate (July 1, 2015)	35,871,282
Births Per Day	5,680
Deaths Per Day	3,924
Net Migrations Per Day	3,014
Net Change Per Day	4,770
Population Change Since January 1st	1,235,430

Net Increase of 1 person every 18 seconds
Population estimated based on interpolation of World Population Prospects data.

Canada Population Indicators

Indicator	Value	World Ranking
Median (Average) Age	40.46 years	27th
Crude Birth Rate	11.285 births/thousand	153rd
Crude Death Rate	7.796 deaths/thousand	94th
Crude Net Migration Rate	5.988 people/thousand	10th
Life Expectancy (Both Sexes)	82.11 years	13th
Life Expectancy (Male)	80 years	10th
Life Expectancy (Female)	84.19 years	14th
Total Fertility Rate	1.703 children/woman	150th
Net Reproduction Rate	0.821 surviving daughters/woman	149th
Sex Ratio At Birth	1.056 males per female	59th
Infant Mortality Rate	3.939 deaths/1,000 live births	157th
Under Five Mortality	4.553 deaths/thousand	160th
Mean Age at Childbearing	30.278 years	41st

Population Data via United Nations WPP

Canada Population Growth

Canada has one of the fastest growth rates of any G8 nation, growing faster than many other industrialized countries. Canada's population has surpassed 35 million, which represents a 1.2% increase over one year and a growth that's higher in the western provinces of the country.
Canada's growth rate has remained rather stable over the last 30 years, ranging anywhere from 0.8% to 1.2%. For the past twenty years, net international migration has been Canada's main source of growth, responsible for 2/3 of its growth between 2012 and 2013, and there is no indication this will change.
It's estimated that this predictable growth will continue, and Canada may have 42.5 million residents by 2056, although it is expected to fall off a bit due to declines in natural population increases. It's also predicted that deaths will outpace births by 2030, which means immigration will become the only growth factor for the country.

Data Sources

World Population Prospects - Global demographic estimates and projections by the United Nations

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/canada-population/

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Canada

Previous (Canaanite Religion)

Next (Canadian Shield)

Canada

Motto: A Mari Usque Ad Mare (Latin)
"From Sea to Sea"

Anthem: "O Canada"
Royal anthem: "God Save the Queen"^[1]^[2]

Capital Ottawa
45°24′N 75°40′W / 45.4, -75.667

Largest city Toronto

Official languages English and French

Recognized regional languages Chipewyan, Cree, Gwich’in, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, Slavey (North and South) and Tłįchǫ^[3]

Demonym Canadian

Government Federal parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy^[4]

- Monarch Elizabeth II

- Governor General David Johnston

- Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Legislature Parliament

- Upper House Senate

- Lower House House of Commons

Establishment

- British North America Acts July 1, 1867

- Statute of Westminster December 11, 1931

- Canada Act April 17, 1982

Area

- Total 9,984,670 km² (2nd)
3,854,085 sq mi

- Water (%) 8.92 (891,163 km²/344,080 mi²)

Population

- 2012 estimate 33,625,989^[5] (35th)

- 2006 census 31,612,897^[6]

- Density 3.41/km² (228th)
8.3/sq mi

GDP (PPP) 2011 estimate

- Total $1.391 trillion^[7] (14th)

- Per capita $40,457^[7] (15th)

GDP (nominal) 2011 estimate

- Total $1.758 trillion^[7] (11th)

- Per capita $51,147^[7] (10th)

Gini (2005) 32.1^[8] (medium)

Currency Canadian dollar ($) (CAD)

Time zone (UTC−3.5 to −8)

- Summer (DST) (UTC−2.5 to −7)

Internet TLD .ca

Calling code [[++1]]

Canada portal

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's second largest country by total area (including its waters), and shares land borders with the United States to the south and northwest. Canada has about one-tenth the population of the U.S.
The lands have been inhabited for millennia by aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, British and French expeditions explored and later settled the Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada became a federal dominion. A gradual process of independence from the United Kingdom moved Canada towards statehood and culminated in the Canada Act 1982, severing the last vestiges of dependence on the British parliament.

A federation now comprising ten provinces and three territories, Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. It is a bilingual and multicultural country, with both English and French as official languages at the federal level. Technologically advanced and industrialized, Canada maintains a diversified economy that is heavily reliant upon its abundant natural resources and upon trade—particularly with the United States, with which Canada has had a long and complex relationship. In contrast to American individualism, Canadians have a strong ethic of “fairness," which for them means to do right by the less fortunate. Arguably, even more than its southern neighbor, Canadians have transcended geographical, ethnic and religious boundaries to create one nation, especially since the issue of Quebec separatism has been relegated to the past.

Etymology

Jacques Cartier

The name Canada comes from a Saint Lawrence Iroquoian word meaning "village" or "settlement." In 1535, inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct explorer Jacques Cartier toward the village of Stadacona.^[9] Cartier used the word 'Canada' to refer to not only that village, but the entire area subject to Donnacona, Chief at Stadacona. By 1545, European books and maps began referring to this region as Canada.^[10]
The French colony of Canada referred to the part of New France along the Saint Lawrence River and the northern shores of the Great Lakes. Later, it was split into two British colonies, called Upper Canada and Lower Canada until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, the name Canada was adopted for the entire country, and was frequently referred to as the Dominion of Canada until the 1950s.^[11]^[12]^[13] As Canada asserted its political autonomy from Britain, the federal government increasingly simply used Canada on legal state documents and treaties. The Canada Act 1982 refers only to "Canada" and, as such, it is currently the only legal (and bilingual) name. This was reflected in 1982 with the renaming of the national holiday from Dominion Day to Canada Day.

History

Aboriginal and Inuit tradition holds that the First Peoples inhabited parts of Canada since the dawn of time. Archaeological studies support a human presence in northern Yukon from 26,500 years ago, and in southern Ontario from 9,500 years ago.^[14] Europeans first arrived when the Vikings settled briefly at L'Anse aux Meadows circa 1000 C.E. The next Europeans to explore Canada's Atlantic coast included John Cabot in 1497 for England ^[15] and Jacques Cartier in 1534 for France^[16]; seasonal Basque whalers and fishermen would subsequently exploit the region between the Grand Banks and Tadoussac for over a century ^[17].
French explorer Samuel de Champlain arrived in 1603 and established the first permanent European settlements at Port Royal in 1605 and Quebec City in 1608. These would become respectively the capitals of Acadia and Canada. Among French colonists of New France, Canadiens extensively settled the St. Lawrence River valley, Acadians settled the present-day Maritimes, while French fur traders and Catholic missionaries explored the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay and the Mississippi watershed to Louisiana. The French and Iroquois Wars broke out over control of the fur trade.

The fur trade was Canada's most important industry until the 1800s

The English established fishing outposts in Newfoundland around 1610 and colonized the Thirteen Colonies to the south. A series of four Inter-colonial Wars erupted between 1689 and 1763. Mainland Nova Scotia came under British rule with the Treaty of Utrecht (1713); the Treaty of Paris (1763) ceded Canada and most of New France to Britain following the Seven Years' War.

The Death of General Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec in 1759, part of the Seven Years' War.

The Royal Proclamation (1763) carved the Province of Quebec out of New France and annexed Cape Breton Island to Nova Scotia. It also restricted the language and religious rights of French Canadians. In 1769, Saint John's Island (now Prince Edward Island) became a separate colony. To avert conflict in Quebec, the Quebec Act of 1774 expanded Quebec's territory to the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, and re-established the French language, Catholic faith, and French civil law in Quebec; it angered many residents of the Thirteen Colonies, helping to fuel the American Revolution.^[18] The Treaty of Paris (1783) recognized American independence and ceded territories south of the Great Lakes to the United States. Approximately 50,000 United Empire Loyalists fled the United States to Canada.^[19] New Brunswick was split from Nova Scotia as part of a reorganization of Loyalist settlements in the Maritimes. To accommodate English-speaking Loyalists in Quebec, the Constitutional Act of 1791 divided the province into French-speaking Lower Canada and English-speaking Upper Canada, granting each their own elected Legislative Assembly.
Canada was a major front in the War of 1812 between the United States and British Empire. Its defense contributed to a sense of unity among British North Americans. Large-scale immigration to Canada began in 1815 from Britain and Ireland. The timber industry would also surpass the fur trade in importance in the early 1800s.
The desire for responsible government resulted in the aborted rebellions of 1837. The Durham Report (1839) would subsequently recommend responsible government and the assimilation of French Canadians into British culture.^[20] The Act of Union (1840) merged The Canadian Provinces into the United Province of Canada. French and English Canadians worked together in the Assembly to reinstate French rights. Responsible government was established for all British North American provinces by 1849.
The signing of the Oregon Treaty by Britain and the United States in 1846 ended the Oregon boundary dispute, extending the border westward along the 49th parallel, and paving the way for British colonies on Vancouver Island (1849) and in British Columbia (1858). Canada launched a series of western exploratory expeditions to claim Rupert's Land and the Arctic region. The Canadian population grew rapidly because of high birth rates; British immigration was offset by emigration to the United States, especially by French Canadians moving to New England.

An animated map, exhibiting the growth and refactoring of Canada's provinces and territories since Confederation.

Following several constitutional conferences, the British North America Act brought about Confederation creating "one Dominion under the name of Canada" on July 1, 1867 with four provinces: Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.^[21] Canada assumed control of Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory to form the Northwest Territories, where Métis' grievances ignited the Red River Rebellion and the creation of the province of Manitoba in July 1870. British Columbia and Vancouver Island (which had united in 1866) and the colony of Prince Edward Island joined Confederation in 1871 and 1873, respectively.
Prime Minister John A. Macdonald's Conservative Party established a National Policy of tariffs to protect nascent Canadian manufacturing industries. To open the West, the government sponsored construction of three trans-continental railways (most notably the Canadian Pacific Railway), opened the prairies to settlement with the Dominion Lands Act, and established the North West Mounted Police to assert its authority over this territory. In 1898, after the Klondike Gold Rush in the Northwest Territories, the Canadian government decided to create the Yukon territory as a separate territory in the region to better control the situation. Under Liberal Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, continental European immigrants settled the prairies, and Alberta and Saskatchewan became provinces in 1905.

Canadian soldiers proved effective in the Allied victory at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917.

Canada automatically entered the First World War in 1914 with Britain's declaration of war, sending volunteers to the Western Front. The Conscription Crisis of 1917 erupted when conservative Prime Minister Robert Borden brought in compulsory military service over the objection of the French-speaking people of Quebec. In 1919, Canada joined the League of Nations independently of Britain; in 1931 the Statute of Westminster affirmed Canada's independence.
The Great Depression of 1929 brought economic hardship to all of Canada. In response, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in Alberta and Saskatchewan presaged a welfare state as pioneered by Tommy Douglas in the 1940s and 1950s. Canada declared war on Germany independently during World War II under Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, three days after Britain. The first Canadian Army units arrived in Britain in December 1939^[22]. Canadian troops played important roles in the Battle of the Atlantic, the failed 1941 Dieppe Raid in France, the Allied invasion of Italy, the Battle of the Scheldt during the liberation of the Netherlands in 1944. The Canadian economy boomed as industry manufactured military materiel for Canada, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union. Despite another Conscription Crisis in Quebec, Canada finished the war with one of the largest armed forces in the world.^[22].
In 1949, Newfoundland joined the Confederation as Canada's 10th province. Post-war prosperity and economic expansion ignited a baby boom and attracted immigration from war-ravaged European countries.^[23]
Quebec underwent profound social and economic changes during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Québécois nationalists began pressing for greater provincial autonomy. The separatist Parti Québécois first came to power in 1976. A referendum on sovereignty-association in 1980 was rejected by a solid majority of the population, and a second referendum in 1995 was rejected by a slimmer margin of just 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent.^[24] In 1997, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession by a province to be unconstitutional; Quebec's sovereignty movement has continued nonetheless.^[24]

The Queen and the Registrar General signing the Constitution Act, 1982.

Under successive Liberal governments of Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, a new Canadian identity emerged. Canada adopted its current Maple Leaf Flag in 1965. In response to a more assertive French-speaking Quebec, the federal government became officially bilingual with the Official Languages Act of 1969. Non-discriminatory Immigration Acts were introduced in 1967 and 1976, and official multiculturalism in 1971; waves of non-European immigration have changed the face of the country. Social democratic programs such as Universal Health Care, the Canada Pension Plan, and Canada Student Loans were initiated in the 1960s and consolidated in the 1970s; provincial governments, particularly Quebec, fought these as incursions into their jurisdictions. Finally, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau pushed through the patriation of the constitution from Britain, enshrining a Charter of Rights and Freedoms based on individual rights in the Constitution Act of 1982.
Economic integration with the United States has increased significantly since World War II. The Canada-United States Automotive Agreement (or Auto Pact) in 1965 and the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement of 1987 were defining moments in integrating the two economies. Canadian nationalists continued to worry about their cultural autonomy as American television shows, movies and corporations became omnipresent.^[25] However, Canadians take special pride in their system of universal health care and their commitment to multiculturalism.^[26]

Government and politics

Parliament Hill, Ottawa.

Canada is a constitutional monarchy with Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, as head of state;^[27] the monarch of Canada also serves as head of state of 15 other Commonwealth countries, putting Canada in a personal union relationship with those other states. The country is a parliamentary democracy with a federal system of parliamentary government and strong democratic traditions.
Canada's constitution consists of written text and unwritten traditions and conventions.^[28] The Constitution Act, 1867 (formerly the British North America Act) established governance based on Parliamentary precedent "similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom" and divided powers between the federal and provincial governments. The Constitution Act, 1982 added a Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees basic rights and freedoms for Canadians that generally cannot be overridden by legislation of any level of government in Canada. However, a "notwithstanding clause," allows the federal parliament and the provincial legislatures to override certain sections of the Charter temporarily, for a period of five years.

The Chamber of the House of Commons.

The position of Prime Minister, Canada's head of government, belongs to the current leader of the political party that can obtain the confidence of a plurality in the House of Commons. Executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers, all of whom are sworn into the Queen's Privy Council for Canada to become Ministers of the Crown and responsible to the elected House of Commons. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are formally appointed by the Governor General (who is the Monarch's representative in Canada). However, the Prime Minister chooses the Cabinet, and by convention, the Governor General respects the Prime Minister's choices. Cabinet ministers are traditionally drawn from elected members of the Prime Minister's party in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister exercises vast political power, especially in the appointment of government officials and civil servants.
The federal parliament is made up of the Queen and two houses: an elected House of Commons and an appointed Senate. Each member in the House of Commons is elected by simple plurality in a "riding" or electoral district; general elections are called by the Governor General when the Prime Minister so advises. While there is no minimum term for a Parliament, a new election must be called within five years of the last general election. Members of the Senate, whose seats are apportioned on a regional basis, are chosen by the Prime Minister and formally appointed by the Governor General, and serve until age 75.
Canada's four major political parties are the Conservative Party of Canada, the Liberal Party of Canada, the New Democratic Party (NDP), and the Bloc Québécois. The current government is formed by the Conservative Party of Canada. While the Green Party of Canada and other smaller parties do not have current representation in Parliament, the list of historical parties with elected representation is substantial.

Law

The Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa, west of Parliament Hill.

Canada's judiciary plays an important role in interpreting laws and has the power to strike down laws that violate the Constitution. The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest court and final arbiter and is led by the Right Honourable Madam Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Its nine members are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. All judges at the superior and appellate levels are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the prime minister and minister of justice, after consultation with non-governmental legal bodies. The federal cabinet appoints justices to superior courts at the provincial and territorial levels. Judicial posts at the lower provincial and territorial levels are filled by their respective governments (see Court system of Canada for more detail).
Common law prevails everywhere except in Quebec, where civil law predominates. Criminal law is solely a federal responsibility and is uniform throughout Canada. Law enforcement, including criminal courts, is a provincial responsibility, but in rural areas of all provinces except Ontario and Quebec, policing is contracted to the federal Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Foreign relations and military

The Peacekeeping Monument in Ottawa.

Canada and the United States share the world's longest undefended border, co-operate on military campaigns and exercises, and are each others largest trading partners. Canada has nevertheless maintained an independent foreign policy, most notably maintaining full relations with Cuba and declining participation in the Iraq War. Canada also maintains historic ties to the United Kingdom and France and to other former British and French colonies through Canada's membership in the Commonwealth of Nations and La Francophonie (French-Speaking Countries).
Canada employs a professional, volunteer military force of about 64,000 regular and 26,000 reserve personnel.^[29] The unified Canadian Forces (CF) comprise the army, navy, and air force. Major CF equipment deployed includes 1,400 armored fighting vehicles, 34 combat vessels, and 861 aircraft. ^[30]

Lester B. Pearson with 1957 Nobel Peace Prize.

Strong attachment to the British Empire and Commonwealth in English Canada led to major participation in British military efforts in the Second Boer War, the First World War, and the Second World War. Since then, Canada has been an advocate for multilateralism, making efforts to resolve global issues in collaboration with other nations.^[31]^[32] Canada joined the United Nations in 1945 and became a founding member of NATO in 1949. During the Cold War, Canada was a major contributor to UN forces in the Korean War, and founded the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in cooperation with the United States to defend against aerial attacks from the Soviet Union.
Canada has played a leading role in United Nations peacekeeping efforts. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, Lester B. Pearson eased tensions by proposing the inception of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force.^[33] Canada has since served in 50 peacekeeping missions, including every UN peacekeeping effort until 1989^[34] and has since maintained forces in international missions in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere.
Canada joined the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1990 and hosted the OAS General Assembly in Windsor in June 2000, and the third Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in April 2001. Canada seeks to expand its ties to Pacific Rim economies through membership in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC).
Since 2001, Canada has had troops deployed in Afghanistan as part of the US stabilization force and the UN-authorized, NATO-commanded International Security Assistance Force. Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) has participated in three major relief efforts in the past two years; the two-hundred member team has been deployed in relief operations after the December 2004 tsunami in South Asia, the Hurricane Katrina in September 2005 and the Kashmir earthquake in October 2005.
In February 2007, Canada, Italy, Britain, Norway, and Russia announced their funding commitments to launch a $1.5 billion project to help develop vaccines they said could save millions of lives in poor nations, and called on others to join them.^[35] In August 2007, Canadian sovereignty in Arctic waters was challenged following a Russian expedition which planted a Russian flag at the seabed at the North Pole. Canada has considered that area to be sovereign territory since 1925.^[36]

Provinces and territories

A geopolitical map of Canada, exhibiting its ten provinces and three territories.

Canada is a federation composed of ten provinces and three territories; in turn, these may be grouped into numerous regions. Western Canada consists of British Columbia and three Prairie provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba). Eastern Canada consists of Central Canada (Quebec and Ontario) and Atlantic Canada (comprised of the three Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia; and Newfoundland and Labrador). Three territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) comprise Northern Canada. Provinces have a large degree of autonomy from the federal government, territories somewhat less. Each has its own provincial or territorial symbols.
The provinces are responsible for most of Canada's social programs (such as health care, education, and welfare) and together collect more revenue than the federal government, an almost unique structure among federations in the world. Using its spending powers, the federal government can initiate national policies in provincial areas, such as the Canada Health Act; the provinces can opt out of these, but rarely do so in practice. Equalization payments are made by the federal government to ensure that reasonably uniform standards of services and taxation are kept between the richer and poorer provinces.
All provinces have unicameral, elected legislatures headed by a Premier selected in the same way as the Prime Minister of Canada. Each province also has a Lieutenant-Governor representing the Queen, analogous to the Governor General of Canada, appointed on the recommendation of the Prime Minister of Canada, though with increasing levels of consultation with provincial governments in recent years.

Geography and climate

Did you know?

Canada is the second largest country in the world by total area (including its waters), and the fourth by land area

Canada occupies a major northern portion of North America, sharing land borders with the contiguous United States to the south and with the US state of Alaska to the northwest, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west; to the north lies the Arctic Ocean. By total area (including its waters), Canada is the second largest country in the world, after Russia, and largest on the continent. By land area it ranks fourth, after Russia, China, and the United States.^[37] Since 1925, Canada has claimed the portion of the Arctic between 60°W and 141°W longitude,^[38] but this claim is not universally recognized. The northernmost settlement in Canada and in the world is Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island—latitude 82.5°N—just 817 kilometres (450 nautical miles) from the North Pole.^[39] Canada has the longest coastline in the world: 243,000 kilometres.^[40]
The population density, 3.5 inhabitants per square kilometre (9.1/sq mi), is among the lowest in the world.^[41] The most densely populated part of the country is the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor along the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River in the southeast.^[42]
To the north of this region is the broad Canadian Shield, an area of rock scoured clean by the last ice age, thinly soiled, rich in minerals, and dotted with lakes and rivers. Canada by far has more lakes than any other country and has a large amount of the world's freshwater.^[43]

The Horseshoe Falls in Ontario is the largest component of Niagara Falls, one of the world's most voluminous waterfalls,^[44] a major source of hydroelectric power, and a tourist destination.

In eastern Canada, the Saint Lawrence River widens into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the world's largest estuary, that contains the island of Newfoundland. South of the Gulf, the Canadian Maritimes protrude eastward along the Appalachian Mountain range from northern New England and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are divided by the Bay of Fundy, which experiences the world's largest tidal variations. Ontario and Hudson Bay dominate central Canada. West of Ontario, the broad, flat Canadian Prairies spread toward the Rocky Mountains, which separate them from British Columbia.
In western Canada, the Mackenzie River flows from the Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean. A tributary of the Mackenzie is the South Nahanni River, which is home to Virginia Falls, a waterfall about twice as high as Niagara Falls.
Northern Canadian vegetation tapers from coniferous forests to tundra and finally to Arctic barrens in the far north. The northern Canadian mainland is ringed with a vast archipelago containing some of the world's largest islands.
Average winter and summer high temperatures across Canada vary depending on the location. Winters can be harsh in many regions of the country, particularly in the interior and Prairie provinces which experience a continental climate, where daily average temperatures are near −15 °C (5 °F) but can drop below −40 °C (−40 °F) with severe wind chills. In non-coastal regions, snow can cover the ground almost six months of the year, (more in the north). Coastal British Columbia is an exception and enjoys a temperate climate with a mild and rainy winter. On the east and west coast average high temperatures are generally in the low 20s °C (70s °F), while between the coasts the average summer high temperature ranges from 25 to 30 °C (75 to 85 °F) with occasional extreme heat in some interior locations exceeding 40 °C (104 °F).^[45]

Economy

Canada is one of the world's wealthiest nations with a high per capita income, a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Group of Eight (G8). Canada has a free market economy with slightly more government intervention than the United States, but much less than most European nations.^[46] Canada has traditionally had a lower per capita gross domestic product (GDP) than its southern neighbor (whereas wealth has been more equally divided), but higher than the large western European economies^[47]^[48]. Since the early 1990s, the Canadian economy has been growing rapidly with low unemployment and large government surpluses on the federal level. Today Canada closely resembles the US in its market-oriented economic system, pattern of production, and high living standards.^[49] While as of October 2007, Canada's national unemployment rate of 5.9 percent is its lowest in 33 years. Provincial unemployment rates vary from a low of 3.6 percent in Alberta to a high of 14.6 percent in Newfoundland and Labrador.
In the past century, the growth of the manufacturing, mining, and service sectors has transformed the nation from a largely rural economy into one primarily industrial and urban. As with other first world nations, the Canadian economy is dominated by the service industry, which employs about three quarters of Canadians. However, Canada is unusual among developed countries in the importance of the primary sector, with the logging and oil industries being two of Canada's most important.
Canada is one of the few developed nations that is a net exporter of energy.^[49]Atlantic Canada has vast offshore deposits of natural gas and large oil and gas resources are centred in Alberta. The vast Athabasca Tar Sands give Canada the world's second largest reserves of oil behind Saudi Arabia. In Quebec, British Columbia, Newfoundland & Labrador, Ontario and Manitoba, hydroelectric power is a cheap and clean source of renewable energy.
Canada is one of the world's most important suppliers of agricultural products, with the Canadian Prairies one of the most important suppliers of wheat, canola and other grains.^[50] Canada is the world's largest producer of zinc and uranium and a world leader in many other natural resources such as gold, nickel, aluminum, and lead; many, if not most, towns in the northern part of the country, where agriculture is difficult, exist because of a nearby mine or source of timber.^[51] Canada also has a sizable manufacturing sector centered in southern Ontario and Quebec, with automobiles and aeronautics representing particularly important industries.
Canada is highly dependent on international trade, especially trade with the United States. The 1989 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (which included Mexico) touched off a dramatic increase in trade and economic integration with the US. Since 2001, Canada has successfully avoided economic recession and has maintained the best overall economic performance in the G8.^[52] Since the mid-1990s, Canada's federal government has posted annual budgetary surpluses and has steadily paid down the national debt.

Demographics

[[Image:Cntower2.jpg|thumbnail|right|Toronto, Ontario skyline with the CN tower. Toronto is Canada's most populous metropolitan area with 5,113,149 people.^[53]
Canada's 2006 census counted 31,612,897, an increase of 5.4 percent since 2001.^[54] Population growth is from immigration and, to a lesser extent, natural growth. About three-quarters of Canada's population lives within 150 kilometres (90 mi) of the U.S. border.^[55] A similar proportion live in urban areas concentrated in the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor (notably: the Greater Golden Horseshoe anchored around Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and their environs), the BC Lower Mainland (Vancouver and environs), and the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor in Alberta.^[56]
According to the 2006 census, the country's largest self-reported ethnic origin is Canadian (accounting for 32 percent of the population), followed by English (21 percent), French (15.8 percent), Scottish (15.1 percent), Irish (13.9 percent), German (10.2 percent), Italian (4.6 percent), Chinese (4.3 percent), First Nations (4.0 percent), Ukrainian (3.9 percent), and Dutch (3.3 percent).^[57] There are 600 recognized First Nations governments or bands encompassing 1,172,790 people.^[58]
In 2001, 49 percent of the Vancouver population and 42.8 percent of Toronto's population were visible minorities. In March 2005, Statistics Canada projected that people of non-European origins will constitute a majority in both Toronto and Vancouver by 2012.^[59] According to Statistics Canada's forecasts, the number of visible minorities in Canada is expected to double by 2017. Roughly one out of every five people in Canada could be a member of a visible minority by 2017.^[60]
Canada has the highest per capita immigration rate in the world,^[61] driven by economic policy and family reunification; Canada also accepts large numbers of refugees. Newcomers settle mostly in the major urban areas of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. By the 1990s and 2000s, the majority of Canada’s immigrants came from Asia.^[62]
Canadians practice a wide variety of religions. According to 2001 census,^[63] 77.1 percent of Canadians identified as being Christians; of this, Catholics make up the largest group (43.6 percent of Canadians). The largest Protestant denomination is the United Church of Canada; about 16.5 percent of Canadians declare no religious affiliation, and the remaining 6.3 percent were affiliated with religions other than Christianity, of which the largest is Islam numbering 1.9 percent, followed by Judaism: 1.1 percent.
Canadian provinces and territories are responsible for education. Each system is similar while reflecting regional history, culture and geography.^[64] The mandatory school age ranges between 5–7 to 16–18 years,^[64] contributing to an adult literacy rate that is 99 percent.^[49] Postsecondary education is also administered by provincial and territorial governments, who provide most of the funding; the federal government administers additional research grants, student loans and scholarships. In 2002, 43 percent of Canadians aged between 25 and 64 had post-secondary education; for those aged 25 to 34 the post-secondary attainment reaches 51 percent.^[65]

Culture

[[Image:Wawadit'la(Mungo Martin House) a Kwakwaka'wakw big house.jpg|thumb|right|A Kwakwaka'wakw totem pole and traditional "big house" in Victoria, BC.]] Canadian culture has historically been influenced by British, French, and Aboriginal cultures and traditions. It has also been influenced by American culture because of its proximity and migration between the two countries. American media and entertainment are popular if not dominant in Canada; conversely, many Canadian cultural products and entertainers are successful in the U.S. and worldwide. Many cultural products are marketed toward a unified "North American" or global market.
The creation and preservation of distinctly Canadian culture are supported by federal government programs, laws, and institutions such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
Canada is a geographically vast and ethnically diverse country. There are cultural variations and distinctions from province to province and region to region. Canadian culture has also been greatly influenced by immigration from all over the world. Many Canadians value multiculturalism, and see Canadian culture as being inherently multicultural.^[26] Multicultural heritage is enshrined in Section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, seen here at Expo 67, are the federal and national police force of Canada and an international icon.

National symbols are influenced by natural, historical, and First Nations sources. Particularly, the use of the maple leaf as a Canadian symbol dates back to the early 18th century and is depicted on its current and previous flags, the penny, and on the coat of arms.^[66] Other prominent symbols include the beaver, Canada goose, common loon, the Crown, and the RCMP.^[66]
Canada's official national sports are ice hockey (winter) and lacrosse (summer).^[67] Hockey is a national pastime and the most popular spectator sport in the country. It is the most popular sport Canadians play, with 1.65 million active participants in 2004.^[68] Canada's six largest metropolitan areas - Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, and Edmonton - have franchises in the National Hockey League (NHL), and there are more Canadian players in the league than from all other countries combined. After hockey, other popular spectator sports include curling and football; the latter is played professionally in the Canadian Football League (CFL). Golf, baseball, skiing, soccer, volleyball, and basketball are widely played at youth and amateur levels,^[68] but professional leagues and franchises are not as widespread.
Canada has hosted several high-profile international sporting events, including the 1976 Summer Olympics, the 1988 Winter Olympics, the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup. Canada was the host nation for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler, British Columbia.^[69]

Language

The population of Montreal, Quebec is mainly French-speaking, with a significant English-speaking community.

Canada's two official languages are English and French. Official Bilingualism in Canada is law, defined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Official Languages Act, and Official Language Regulations; it is applied by the Commissioner of Official Languages. English and French have equal status in federal courts, Parliament, and in all federal institutions. The public has the right, where there is sufficient demand, to receive federal government services in either English or French, and official language minorities are guaranteed their own schools in all provinces and territories.^[70]
English and French are the mother tongues of 59.7 percent and 23.2 percent of the population respectively.^[71] 98.5 percent of Canadians speak English or French (English only: 67.5 percent, French only: 13.3 percent, both: 17.7 percent).^[72] English and French Official Language Communities, defined by First Official Language Spoken, constitute 73.0 percent and 23.6 percent of the population.
Although 85 percent of French-speaking Canadians live in Quebec, there are substantial Francophone populations in Ontario, Alberta and southern Manitoba, with an Acadian population in the northern and southeastern parts of New Brunswick constituting 35 percent of that province's population as well as concentrations in Southwestern Nova Scotia and on Cape Breton Island. Ontario has the largest French population outside Quebec. The Charter of the French Language in Quebec makes French the official language in Quebec, and New Brunswick is the only province to have a statement of official bilingualism in the constitution. Other provinces have no official language(s) as such, but French is used as a language of instruction, in courts, and other government services in addition to English. Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec allow for both English and French to be spoken in the provincial legislatures, and laws are enacted in both languages. In Ontario, French has some legal status but is not fully co-official. Several aboriginal languages have official status in Northwest Territories. Inuktitut is the majority language in Nunavut, and one of three official languages in the territory.
Non-official languages are important in Canada, with 5,202,245 people listing one as a first language.^[71] Some significant non-official first languages include Chinese (853,745 first-language speakers), Italian (469,485), German (438,080), and Punjabi (271,220).^[71]

Notes

↑ Department of Canadian Heritage. Royal anthem 'God Save The Queen'. Queen's Printer. Retrieved January 7, 2012.
↑ Kallmann, Helmut. National and royal anthems. Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. Historica-Dominion. Retrieved January 7, 2012.
↑ (2004) Official Languages Act. Territorial Printer. Retrieved January 7, 2012.
↑ Hail, M and Lange, S (February 25, 2010). Federalism and Representation in the Theory of the Founding Fathers: A Comparative Study of US and Canadian Constitutional Thought. Publius: the Journal of Federalism 40 (3): 366–388.
↑ Canada's population clock. Statistics Canada. Retrieved January 7, 2012.
↑ Population and dwelling counts, for Canada, provinces and territories, 2006 and 2001 censuses – 100% data. Statistics Canada (2010-01-06). Retrieved January 7, 2012.
↑ ^7.0 ^7.1 ^7.2 ^7.3 Canada. International Monetary Fund. Retrieved January 7, 2012.
↑ Central Intelligence Agency, Distribution of family income – Gini index The World Factbook. Retrieved January 7, 2012.
↑ Bruce G. Trigger and James F. Pendergast, 1978 "Saint-Lawrence Iroquoians" Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 15. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.), 357–361 OCLC 58762737
↑ Jacques Cartier, 1545, Relation originale de Jacques Cartier Tross, (1863 edition). Retrieved February 10, 2012.
↑ "In 1867, the colonies of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are united in a federal state, the Dominion of Canada…." Territorial evolution Atlas of Canada Natural Resources Canada. Retrieved February 10, 2012.
↑ "The British North America Act of 1867 brought together four British colonies … in one federal Dominion under the name of Canada." Canada: History Country Profiles Commonwealth - History. Commonwealth Secretariat. Retrieved February 10, 2012.
↑ Norman Hillmer and W. David MacIntyre. Canadian Encyclopedia "With CONFEDERATION in 1867, Canada became the first federation in the British Empire … " "Commonwealth". Historica Project. Retrieved February 10, 2012.
↑ J.V. Wright, A History of the Native People of Canada: Early and Middle Archaic Complexes Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation (2001). Retrieved February 10, 2012.
↑ Encyclopædia Britannica Online Encyclopædia Britannica John Cabot Retrieved February 10, 2012.
↑ World Book, Inc., "Cartier, Jacques" World book Encyclopedia (2001, ISBN 071660101X).
↑ The Canadian Encyclopedia "Basques" Historica. Retrieved February 10, 2012.
↑ Canadian Museum of Civilization, Wars on Our Soil, earliest times to 1885. Retrieved August 21, 2006.
↑ Christopher Moore, The Loyalist: Revolution Exile Settlement (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994, ISBN 0771060939).
↑ David Mills, Durham Report The Canadian Encyclopedia Historica-Dominion. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
↑ John Farthing, Freedom Wears a Crown (Toronto: Kingswood House, 1957).
↑ ^22.0 ^22.1 C.P. Stacey. History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War. (London: Queen's Printer, 1948)
↑ Harold Troper, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. History of Immigration to Toronto Since the Second World War: From Toronto 'the Good' to Toronto 'the World in a City' 2000-2003. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
↑ ^24.0 ^24.1 John Alexander Dickinson and Brian Young, A Short History of Quebec (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003, ISBN 0773524509).
↑ J.L. Granatstein, Yankee Go Home: Canadians and Anti-Americanism. (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1997, ISBN 0006385419).
↑ ^26.0 ^26.1 James Bickerton & Alain Gagnon (eds), Canadian Politics (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2004, ISBN 1551115956)
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References

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External links

All links retrieved April 2, 2013.

Credits

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Canada ^history

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Thursday, September 17, 2015

Canada's Natural Resources in high demand, but Underexploited

US Thirsts for Canadian Water

Environmental Data Standards

Has Foreign Aid Been Greened?

Canada's growing population and its environmental influence, 1956 to 2006

Archived Content

Introduction

Canada's population continues to grow…

Most of the population increase in the last half-century occurred in Ontario, but rates of growth were strongest in parts of northern and western Canada

The population and its influence on the environment

Effects of population growth—more people mean more road vehicles

Conclusion

Footnotes

A note to the world’s environmental community on the eve of the 140th anniversary of the Metre Convention

Canada Population 2015

Canada Population 2015

Rapid Population Growth

Canada's Population by Province and Territory

Largest Cities in Canada

Canada Population Density

Canada Demographics

Canadian Diaspora

Canada Population Growth

How Many People Live in Canada Right Now?

Canada Population Clock

Canada Population Indicators

Canada Population Growth

Data Sources

Canada

Contents

Etymology

History

Government and politics

Law

Foreign relations and military

Provinces and territories

Geography and climate

Economy

Demographics

Culture

Language

Notes

References

External links

Credits

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