Steven Nitah, a former First Nations chief who is leading an effort to get Indigenous communities to protect forests and get revenues through carbon credits, on March 4.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
An Indigenous-led initiative to protect Canadian wilderness by offering carbon offsets is looking to the mining industry to help fund its cause.
First 30x30 Canada was set up to help the country achieve its target of preserving 30 per cent of land and 30 per cent of water under a United Nations agreement. The initiative aims to bolster economic development on First Nations territories by funding the preservation of natural areas.
Steven Nitah, one of the founders, presented his case to officials with mining companies, non-governmental organizations and governments at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada conference early this month in Toronto.
“It’s about laying seeds, so I think that’s been done. We achieved that,” Mr. Nitah said in a recent interview. He is a former chief of Łutsël K’é Dene First Nation in the Northwest Territories and was a member of the NWT legislature.
Mr. Nitah, managing director of Nature for Justice.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Mining companies could help push the effort forward by providing financial support to develop preservation projects and lobby the federal and provincial governments to get validation for Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), which nations identify for preservation. They could also purchase credits if needed to offset their own emissions, as well as meet their sustainability targets, Mr. Natih said.
First 30x30 Canada is an initiative of Nature For Justice, a global social-justice charity in which Mr. Nitah is managing director for Canada. The nature-preservation effort has received corporate support from Royal Bank of Canada and Domtar Corp., as well as the BHP Foundation, which provided $14-million in January to help expand the program across the country.
Over the next five years, the group aims to conduct 10 market assessments for potential carbon projects and narrow those down to five that would undergo feasibility studies. It then plans to launch as many as three projects on Indigenous lands under local stewardship, he said.
First 30x30 can provide a number of services to further its aims, including supporting investors in efforts to engage in free, prior and informed consent with First Nations to ensure fair negotiations.
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It can also help Indigenous communities build up capacity to operate projects as well as make introductions to investors, philanthropists and buyers of carbon credits, which be used to offset industrial emissions or traded on voluntary markets.
To date, Ottawa has provided funding for 50 First Nations to establish IPCAs. First 30X30 is calling on governments to offer more financial support. It says less than 10 per cent of international climate finance goes to locally led projects, such as these.
The program ties into a landmark plan to preserve and restore global biodiversity that Canada and other countries signed in 2022. That UN agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, includes a commitment to protect 30 per cent of lands and water by 2030. As of 2024, Canada was less than halfway to that goal.
First 30x30 Canada takes its cue from The Great Bear Initiative, which was set up by eight First Nations to protect the Great Bear Rainforest on the B.C. coast. At three million hectares, it represents the world’s largest forest carbon project. The communities of Coastal First Nations keep 80 per cent of the revenue from carbon-credit sales. Much of that money goes to forest-stewardship programs.
“Great Bear is a great example. I think that could be scaled right across the country,” Mr. Nitah said.