The development of the oil sands is a significant threat to the ecological integrity of the boreal forest.
Our vision is that at least 50% of Canada's boreal forest be protected from industrial use. New, large, interconnected and representative protected areas need to be established to help mitigate damage caused by rapid oil sands development.
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.
CPAWS supports no new expansion of oil sands activity until regulators adopt an ecosystem indicator and threshold based approach and use it when making decisions to ensure oil sands development in the Athabasca Region is not exceeding these thresholds.
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 finding solutions.
CPAWS Northern Alberta is advocating for the protection of large representative areas of boreal forests and the adoption of best practices.
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