We stand at a pivotal moment in time.
Thanks to numerous supporters including the Sisters of St Joseph, Ecojustice is ready to build on the valuable progress that we have made as we tackle the greatest challenge of our era: climate change.
Around the world, young people — afraid for their future yet inspired by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg of Sweden —are resolutely raising their voices to demand greater climate ambition from world leaders.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a special report last year with the stark warning that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must halve in the next decade and reach zero by 2050.
We must act now if we are to stay within 1.5 degrees of pre-industrial levels and avoid catastrophic climate change.
Since the IPCC report was released, Ecojustice’s message that government must take meaningful action to lower Canada’s GHG emissions has been amplified – and our successful track record of using the power of the law to defend your right to a safe climate has continued.
Amidst the world’s heightened threat of rising sea levels, forest fires, mass species extinction and climate related human health issues, we are seeing sprouts of hope through the courts.
Last year, two Ecojustice victories prevented an additional 21.9 million tonnes of heat-trapping gases from entering the atmosphere each year.
First, we stopped the expansion of a coal transfer facility on the Fraser River, which would have carried four million tonnes of thermal coal by open-car rail from Wyoming through communities in Vancouver’s Lower Mainland, bound for foreign markets. Ecojustice played a key role in the local Port Authority’s decision to cancel the permit for this project.
Stopping this proposed expansion prevented 6.9 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from being released into the atmosphere annually and protected the health of communities from exposure to coal dust.
Second, Ecojustice’s successful Trans Mountain lawsuit saw the Court confirm that the federal government cannot legally approve an industrial project based on a flawed environmental assessment — in this case, an assessment that ignored the impacts of marine shipping on endangered orcas.
By halting construction on Trans Mountain, we stopped more than 15 million tonnes of additional carbon emissions from polluting our climate each year. And that’s not all.
Earlier this year, Ecojustice also secured a major win for wild salmon. The Federal Court issued a decision that struck down the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans’ policy of not testing for a contagious virus widespread in open-net fish farms off the coast of British Columbia.
In its ruling, the court made clear that government must take a precautionary, science-based approach to managing fish farms, which includes considering their impacts on at-risk wild salmon populations.
These victories are a testament to what we can accomplish when we work together.
Transition can be hard to notice when you are in the middle of it, but each victory signals that we are making the changes that our planet needs to avert disaster — and is a testament to our collective power.
Ecojustice’s combination of law reform, litigation, and public outreach will achieve accountability in law, combined with durable governance frameworks to strengthen and sustain the efforts of the current and future Canadian governments to combat climate change.
Together, we will protect precious carbon stores like Canada’s boreal forest and accelerate the transition to renewable energy and low carbon communities, and help Canada seize our unique opportunity to set a positive example for other industrialized countries and pave the way for developing countries.
By Huda Al-Saedy - halsaedy@ecojustice.ca