Oil Sands
CPAWS Position Statement on Canada's Oil Sands
CPAWS's vision is to achieve large landscape conservation that protects wilderness and wildlife over the long term, while meeting the needs of local communities. Our vision is that at least 50% of Canada's boreal forest be protected from industrial use. The development of tar sands is a significant threat to the ecological integrity of this important wilderness area. New, large, interconnected and representative protected areas need to be established to help mitigate this destruction.
CPAWS recognizes that society needs to reduce its consumption of energy, increase its energy efficiency, and to shift our energy supply away from carbon-based energy to low-impact renewable energy sources. For the important reasons stated above we oppose new approvals for oil sands projects until there is an effective government plan that is fully implemented and deals with the environmental and social concerns that unplanned development has created. Approved and existing projects must convert to best available technologies (which must constantly evolve and improve) to reduce their use of energy and water, their air and water emissions, and their ecological footprint. Federal, provincial, and municipal governments all have a role to play in the solutions.
What is CPAWS doing in the Oil Sands?
CPAWS is working towards achieving the following goals to minimize the impact of poorly managed minable and in-situ oil sands development on Alberta's boreal:
- Develop a regional plan for the oil sands region that describes landscape objectives that will be met through the oil sands lease allocation and regulatory approval processes.
- Suspend new lease sales and project approvals until the regional plan is in place.
- Establish new large scale interconnected protected areas representative of the boreal region.
- Encouraging the establishment of quantitative limits on cumulative industrial disturbances and precautionary standards for wildlife habitat, water use and release, air contaminants, and watershed integrity to ensure that boreal forests are protected.
- Encourage the establishment of a Land Management Planning Standard to guide the development of operating plans for all resource companies working in a given management area.
- Encourage companies to implement “best practices” to minimize environmental damage from in situ development.
Take a tour down the Athabasca
CPAWS Northern Alberta Boreal Campaigner Helene Walsh and then Executive Director Catherine Shier joined over 30 other people on a canoe trip from Fort McMurray to Fort McKay in support of the Athabasca River.
Read about the Oil Sands Tour by canoe.
More...
For more information on the Athabasca Heartland, click here.
CPAWS/Pembina Institute report "Death by a Thousand Cuts" released on the impacts of in-situ oil sands development on Alberta's Boreal Forest Download the report: low resolution (4 MB); print resolution (19 MB) Download the factsheet (600 kb).
Oil Sands Fever, The Environmental Implications of Canada's Oil Sands Rush, Pembina Institute
