Ecosystem Status and Trends

Purpose

To provide sound, science-based information on the status and trends of Canada's ecosystems, as a component of the Biodiversity Outcomes Framework, a foundation for prioritizing the national biodiversity agenda and a vehicle for dialogue with society on the importance of healthy ecosystems.

Scope

The Ecosystem Status and Trends Assessment (ESTA) will provide an integrated assessment of current status, emerging trends and significant stressors of Canada's ecosystems. It will also propose a new and ongoing system for ecosystem monitoring and status and trends reporting, to provide policy-makers with the detailed assessments required for policy development and to alert the public to ecosystem changes of concern. Finally, the ESTA will add ecosystem content to compliment the Status of Wild Species, Protected Areas and Invasive Alien Species Reports, and enable more complete implementation and communication of the "Assess" component of the Biodiversity Outcomes Framework.

Goals of the Assessment

1. Making the best use of available information
   
   

   The ESTA will synthesize existing information from disparate sources (e.g. government documents, peer-reviewed literature, non-government reports) on status and trends of Canada's ecosystems, in a way that makes the information easily accessible to non-technical decision-makers and supports the "Assess" component of the Biodiversity Outcomes Framework. Agreement on the most appropriate ecosystem reporting units for a national assessment will be reached.

2. Establishing Indicators of Ecosystem Health and Vitality

   ESTA will develop a small set of new (perhaps 2 to 3), coast-to-coast-to-coast ecosystem indicators that will supplement existing information and allow a standardized view of ecosystem status and trends at the national level. This could include the development of a new "Ecosystem Integrity Index" (e.g. Ecosystems at Risk, Canadian Biodiversity Index) or the application to Canada of an existing Index.

3. Propose a path forward for a national System of Ecosystem Trends Monitoring and Reporting

   As a backdrop, ESTA will identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current ecosystem monitoring efforts in Canada at both the federal and provincial/territorial levels and make recommendations on a national approach to ecosystem monitoring and status/trends reporting.



4. Establish a process for ongoing multi-jurisdictional and inter-departmental integration of ecosystem information

   ESTA will create a legacy of multi-jurisdictional and inter-departmental integration of ecosystem information.

5. Support International Biodiversity Reporting Commitments

   Although the main focus is providing information that is useful domestically, the ESTA should also contribute to Canada's reporting requirements as a Party to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. As such, the ESTA should draw on the global biodiversity indicators as much as possible.

Principles

The ESTA should:

• take a science-based approach, drawing on the best available information from a variety of well-documented sources;
• use information gleaned from traditional and local sources (e.g. First Nations TK) where it is deemed to be "best information";
• build extensively on existing information from disparate sources, providing better coherence to existing information as opposed to collecting new information;
• respect data ownership by using information that is analyzed and synthesized by data owners;
• include trends and mechanisms for trends monitoring, as well as status of both ecosystems and stressors;
• provide information useful for policy development (i.e., provide ecosystem-based information that will support other initiatives, such the Ecosystem Approach to environmental management and the new ecosystem focus of COSEWIC);
• take a flexible approach to ecological classification, allowing the use of different provincial/territorial based systems for regional reports;
• be based on guidelines that ensure some consistency in the indicators used and transparency in methodology to facilitate a national rollup;
• ensure appropriate attribution (i.e., ensure that all participating jurisdictions and organizations are credited for their contributions);
• be suitable for contributing to Convention on Biological Diversity reporting requirements (e.g. using global indicators where possible);
• engage a variety of interests in its development;
• be innovative in its approach (e.g. profiling traditional ecological knowledge, making best use of a variety of delivery mechanisms);
• acknowledge the complexity of ecosystems, their interconnections with economic, social and competitiveness issues and uncertainty involved in reporting;

Report Content

The report is intended to assess ecosystem health and stressors for Canada's ecosystems in a variety of ways that are relevant to the public and decision-makers.

A generalized and nationally applicable ecosystem taxonomy will be agreed on early in the process that will allow for national roll-ups in policy-relevant units. Some possibilities include dominant land cover classes or macro-biomes, such as wetlands, forests, grasslands, coastal, estuaries, marine, aquatic, as well as human-dominated ecosystems such as urban and agricultural systems. Furthermore, information will be organized in a way that allows for the several relevant roll-ups of the same information, for example by Canada's Ecozones, Watersheds and/or the National Forest Inventory Grid.

The report content will be bounded by status, trends and stressors of the biodiversity/ecosystem component of natural capital. The report will not be a comprehensive State of the Environment Assessment. It will not include information on air quality, pollution, energy consumption etc, except as that information is directly relevant to biodiversity and ecosystems.

Traditional and local knowledge, gleaned from published case studies, will be drawn upon to enhance the perspective on ecosystem health where permission is appropriately granted.