Innovation Anthology #79: Associate Professor
As industrial development pushes further into the Canadian hinterland, the impact on wildlife habitat, animals and plants becomes more apparent.
But as Environment Canada biologist Mike Norton explains, maintaining biological diversity is a key underpinning of economic strength.
MIKE NORTON: Biodiversity is a crucial component of what we’re increasingly coming to label as our natural capital. If we look at the key assets that Canada has underlying currently a very strong economy and a very high quality of life, we can look to things like our human capital, produced capital, social capital. Increasingly we’re recognizing the importance of our natural capital because of the goods and ecosystem services that it provides – things like timber and oil and food production and so on. And services in the sense of climate regulation, flood regulation and those kinds of things which are very difficult to value but at the same time we know are extremely valuable and perhaps irreplaceable.
Canada has made international commitments to conserve biodiversity.
That’s why Mike Norton says biologists and policy makers across Canada and around the world are watching closely the innovative biodiversity monitoring program now underway in Alberta.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY, I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
Michael van den Heuvel, PhD,
University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, mheuvel@upei.ca
Sponsor
Program Date: 2007-10-30