Policy Horizons Canada, a federal think tank that tries to instill a “future-oriented mindset” within the bureaucracy, recently released Disruptions on the Horizon. While this report targets civil servants, it is publicly available. A CBC article discusses its “top ten threats”.
The 500 people surveyed for the report ranked the number one (and most likely) threat as “People cannot tell what is true and what is not”. The public is not well served when corporations promote false climate “solutions” such as carbon capture and storage, small modular reactors, or liquefied natural gas. The federal Competition Bureau clearly needs more power to tackle greenwashing.
Number two may come as a surprise: “Biodiversity is lost and ecosystems collapse”. The report says that this disruption jeopardizes basic needs such as clean air, water, and food; and leads to “increased mortality rates, healthcare system collapse, and overall reduced quality of life.”
Of course, ecosystem collapse is already happening in many parts of the world. Those surveyed ranked this disruption second on two scales: likelihood, and impact (after a world war). But Canadians needn’t worry, at least for a while — “Many Canadian regions become uninhabitable” didn’t make the top ten and was ranked well down in likelihood.
“Immigrants do not choose Canada” ranked low as a disruption. It was deemed unlikely that Canada will lose out in “the global competition for highly skilled and upwardly mobile immigrants” owing to “affordability problems, housing shortages, and a lack of healthcare.” One might add that if Canada remains inhabitable while other parts of the world do not, we will remain a “sought-after destination”.
Overall, climate change came in third as a disruption, expressed as “Emergency response is overwhelmed”. The prospect that frequent and severe fires, floods, tornadoes and hurricanes, with “widespread destruction of infrastructure, property, and businesses,” will displace millions of people was seen as both likely and impactful.
Having spent much of my public service career addressing biodiversity loss and climate change, it’s good to see recognition of these issues. But the real question is, “What will governments do about them?”
The first thing to do is to stop looking at issues in isolation. Start thinking in terms of relationships – take a more “ecological” view. The report acknowledges this. Figure 4 shows “interconnected disruptions”: “Democratic systems breakdown” is linked to “People cannot tell what is true and what is not”, “Billionaires run the world”, “Canadian national unity unravels”, and “Basic needs go unmet”.
As a federal biodiversity science advisor, I had limited success linking “my” issue to climate change. Colleagues who attended UN climate meetings saw biodiversity loss as a second-rate, largely irrelevant issue. But even if we all stop emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, they will remain in the atmosphere and wreak havoc until we allow ecosystems to withdraw the gases and store them as carbon and nitrogen in healthy living soils, wetlands, forests, croplands, etc.
The Earth is resilient and has amazing potential to regenerate life. People around the world are working to restore soils that absorb and retain water and carbon, support plant growth, and mitigate drought, fires and floods. Positive change can happen quickly.
Biodiversity really does matter. You may survive if your house and car burn up, but not without food and water.
Instead of allowing biodiversity to thrive and “keep the natural world in balance” (to quote the report), we engage in ecocidal behavior: draining wetlands, destroying fields and forests to build roads and houses, mowing lawns, killing “unwanted” vegetation with herbicides, etc.
You may disagree. You may think that biodiversity loss and climate change aren’t really problems, or that technology will find all the answers, or that individual actions don’t matter. The report points out that we live in separate realities “shaped by personalized media,” that “mis- and disinformation make it almost impossible to know what is fake or real,” and that “it is much harder to know what or who to trust.”
The report does offer a few “positive” disruptors, such as “Healthy environments are a human right.” Those surveyed placed this quite low on both the likelihood and impact scales. They ranked my personal favorite disruptor, “Indigenous people govern unceded territory”, even lower. It seems the mainstream view is that giving Turtle Island’s original inhabitants a crack at making things better would be neither likely nor impactful.
I’d suggest considering some additional positive disruptors, like “Nature gets legal rights”, or “Ecosystem restoration becomes a societal norm”.
A timeline indicates that the Policy Horizons folks have been around for nearly three decades, having managed to convince successive governments they are doing something useful. I find it encouraging that civil servants are allowed to think about the future. Let’s hope this continues.
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