Northwest Territories Project for Permanence a lighthouse model for the future of Indigenous-led conservation

Dahti Tsetso is excited to see if her children and others across the North grow up to be Guardians one day. 

The prospect is more likely now, thanks to the announcement Thursday of a financing model for the initiative in the Northwest Territories (N.W.T.)

At a celebration in Behchokǫ̀, about 100 km northwest of Yellowknife, Dene and Métis leadership and citizens were joined by territorial and federal leaders as $375 million in support was announced for Indigenous-led conservation efforts across the territory. The funds will expand and develop guardian programs, help establish new protected areas and further land-based culture and language revitalization programs. 

The federal government is contributing $300 million, with another $75 million from private donors for the project. 

“I see this being a very powerful model,” said Tsetso, deputy director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, which played a convening role in the agreement.

The agreement will result in hundreds of jobs per year in remote parts of the region, while supporting a land-based economy, culture revitalization and well-being for the Dene, according to the Indigenous Leadership Initiative.

The funding establishes a Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) model, which bundles together finance partners across governments, foundations and individual donors. PFPs contribute to conservation development across an entire region and are proving to be successful for conservation finance.

The Guardian program, which the PFP will support, will also provide what Tsetso calls “a more level playing field” when it comes to relationships with industry. Tsetso recalls the importance of the Guardian program when she worked at the Dehcho government on a pipeline replacement project with Enbridge. Guardians “enabled our communities to engage with industry in a really meaningful way.

“Empowering Indigenous governments to grow and catalyze existing guarding programs is going to be one of the really exciting outcomes of the fund,” Tsetso said. 

The Government of the Northwest Territories did not contribute any funds to the project, but territorial Environment and Climate Change Minister Jay Macdonald told Canada’s National Observer that the territory will support the work done through the initiative. Macdonald points to the regular budgeting process and the bilateral nature agreement with the federal government, which will help “provide guidance and support to the process behind the scenes to ensure that all of the regulatory processes are followed,” he said.

The first PFP in Canada was the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement, which tied together funding from the federal government, British Columbia and philanthropic partners. Today, 6.4 million hectares, around the size of Ireland, are protected in the Great Bear Rainforest on Canada’s West Coast. Earlier this summer, the Great Bear Sea initiative expanded protections off the coast of the Great Bear Rainforest through a $335-million PFP.

Tsetso believes that tracking and monitoring will demonstrate the benefits of the PFP initiative in the territory and develop conservation in the Indigenous nations of the North.  

“We can help share the story, we can help share the narrative,” Tsetso said. 

The new N.W.T. PFP will include 22 Indigenous government signatories, made up of both Dene and Métis governments, and will cover the entire territory, except for the northern Inuvialuit region. That area was set apart in a 1984 land claim agreement between the Inuvialuit, federal and territorial governments. Although the Inuvialuit government was at the table early in the process, it was not one of the final signatories. 

The PFP in the N.W.T. was first announced two years ago in Montreal at the United Nations biodiversity conference (COP15). It was one of the four regions identified in Ottawa’s announcement of more than $800 million in conservation funding. 

This recent agreement will be a boon for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s environmental promises, as Canada inches closer to the 2030 target to protect 30 per cent of Canada’s lands and waters laid out in the Montreal-Kunming Agreement, the Paris Agreement-style roadmap for biodiversity, aiming to halt Earth’s sixth mass extinction event. 

Federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault has maintained that the pathway to protect 30 per cent of Canada will not be straightforward. Some provinces and territories will need to conserve more than others to ensure Canada can meet its global commitment. 

With the PFP, it’s unclear if the N.W.T. will conserve more than 30 per cent, but the fund provides ample resources for Indigenous governments to pursue conservation aims. Macdonald says the initiative will help achieve the territory’s Healthy Land, Healthy People work plan, which supports Indigenous-led conservation. However, this plan is scarce on targets. 

Tsetso, who worked with the Dehcho government before joining the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, knows that Indigenous governments in the territory have a “high ambition when it comes to honouring stewardship responsibilities.” 

It goes back to the Dene worldview that Indigenous leaders must always have their eye on the future, and “in order for Indigenous Peoples to be strong in their way of life, to be healthy, thriving peoples, we need healthy, thriving landscapes.”

— with files from John Woodside 

Matteo Cimellaro / Canada’s National Observer / Local Journalism Initiative