PROTECTING BIODIVERSITY –REAL ESTATE'S NEW FRONTIER

BY NATHALIE SAVARIA, JOURNALIST JBC MÉDIA BY DENIS BERNIER

The focus of the A New Approach to Property Management | Real Estate + Biodiversity symposium on December 15, 2022 was to emphasize the links between humans, the built environment and nature by means of resilient, inclusive and sustainable development in urban areas. It brought together some sixty participants who discussed issues related to biodiversity, and proposed some possible solutions.

En septembre dernier, My Cantine a remporté le prix JBC Média pour sa solution de réfrigérateur connecté lors de la sixième édition du concours PitchTech Innovation Construction 2022, dans le cadre du Grand Batimatech.

Organized by the Ivanhoe Cambridge Real Estate Chair UQAM, in conjunction with several public, private and university organizations, it coincided with the COP15 event, the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, held in Montréal from December 7 to 19, 2022. The event concluded with the adoption of the KunmingMontréal Global Biodiversity Framework to safeguard nature and reverse biodiversity loss.

A Priceless Opportunity

For the real estate Chair Andrée De Serres, it was essential to have the symposium take place during COP15, "an event that raised awareness about the importance of this issue. It also attracted the interest of various players in the real estate industry, for it is not just building owners and managers who are concerned about biodiversity. It is something that also concerns the City of Montréal, the building trades, engineers and other professionals, in fact anyone involved in the development and construction of buildings and neighbourhoods."

She believes that COP15 gave "a boost to everyone, including average citizens, who are increasingly aware of the issue. People now have a better grasp of biodiversity, a concept that involves protecting all living things, not just humans, but also nature, flora and fauna."

Causes And Issues

The goal of the event was to raise awareness and mobilize various stakeholders in the real estate sector to act collectively for the protection and development of biodiversity. Climate change, pollution, invasive species and soil mineralization are but a few of the underlying causes of the biodiversity crisis. Solutions must be put in place to curb those negative impacts.

"When we first started talking about greenhouse gases (GHGs) and climate change, it was quite a challenge just getting people to agree on measures to stimulate change. We were taking our first tentative steps at that point, but protecting biodiversity is a much more complex issue that requires real interaction among all parties sharing a given territory," said Mme De Serres.

PRESENTATIONS, DISCUSSIONS AND REFLECTIONS

The conference program included a series of lectures aimed at increasing our understanding of the risks associated with biodiversity loss, and its systemic and eco-systemic impacts on the built environment. The presentations demonstrated the importance of protecting biodiversity, and of promoting the social and ecological resilience of cities and their inhabitants.

Lectures were followed by two workshops where participants discussed the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss, and proposed concrete solutions that would enhance biodiversity in urban areas.

The results of each discussion group were then presented to all participants. For example, a group headed by Mario Poirier, the director of BOMA Québec's Building Energy Challenge (BEC), suggested launching a Building Biodiversity Challenge similar in design to the BEC, where participating buildings compete to increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

MULTI-LEVEL, MULTI-FACTOR SOLUTIONS

Whereas COP15 led to an agreement to renewed commitment on the part of local, regional and national governments, the challenges of biodiversity loss call for multi-level, multi-factor solutions involving not only the public and private sectors, but also key decision-makers, professionals, researchers, citizens, etc.

Guest speaker François William Croteau, senior director, Strategy and Innovation for resilient cities at the innovation consulting services firm Innovitech (and also the former mayor of the Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie borough), emphasized that "the main biodiversity issue in urban areas today is linked to the urban development of the past century, which led to soil mineralization and thus a dramatic degradation in terms of ground water, flora and fauna. That means that we must now rebuild ecosystems. We must undo what we've been building for years, which will result in significant costs. But the cost of doing nothing is even worse, because we are talking about adapting our cities so that we can cope with flooding, severe weather and extreme storms. And if we don't take that important step to rebuild ecosystems, well... that will mean massive expenditures simply to maintain existing infrastructures such as aqueducts, sewer systems and the like."

One of the guest panelists invited to summarize the day's results, Stéphan Déry, Assistant Deputy Minister of Real Property Services, Public Services and Procurement Canada, mentioned that his department is in the process of drafting a biodiversity strategy for its buildings and properties. It is expected to be completed in December 2023. "We have identified 160 buildings that are being assessed for their current state of impact on biodiversity, impacts generated during their construction and also their operations. If that analysis determines that they have a negative impact on biodiversity, corrective measures will be determined. We will then develop criteria for monitoring building performance so as to ensure that in future we contribute to protecting biodiversity."

Another guest panelist, Joannie Tanguay, vice-president, Strategy and Execution at Ivanhoe Cambridge, described the challenge of biodiversity for her organization. "[...] It's kind of the next frontier in terms of the ESG investment commitments we've made over the past few years. We've always aimed to be proactive. Obviously, nature teaches us to be humble, but we have a role to play as a real estate investor. Our goal is to integrate biodiversity into our strategy and the means of implementing that strategy, and then to get all our employees involved in the process."

SYMPOSIUM FOLLOW-UP

Very enthusiastic about the results of the symposium, Andrée De Serres took a moment to mention an upcoming webinar series. "Starting this winter, we'll be offering a new webinar series where scientific experts will be asked to share the progress made as regards climate change, hydrology and urban agriculture, so that policymakers, managers and elected officials can know what indicators and metrics to use in order to implement changes in a rigorous manner."

For more info on the symposium, the guest speakers and the panelists: https://ivanhoecambridge.uqam.ca/ en/evenement/colloque-cop15-penser-limmobilierautrement-immobilier-biodiversite-valoriser-les-liensentre-lenvironnement-bati-lhumain-et-la-nature-2/

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REAL ESTATE AND CLIMATE CHANGE: IT'S HAPPENING... RIGHT IN MY BACKYARD!

Political authorities are asking the real estate industry to decarbonize their buildings. We agree, and have identified some technical, financial and fiscal support available in the public sector to pursue that goal. When we appeared at a City of Montréal public consultation about the issue, we spoke in favour of creating compact neighbourhoods with a diverse mix of users and services, thus minimizing the need to travel. What is the point of decarbonizing buildings if we don't rethink how we get to them?

That approach (the 15-minute city with basic needs located within a 15-minute walk from residents' homes) is well-known and is supported by scientists. It involves creating a living environment where a sufficient number of residents and services support a transit network and an employment hub. A recent study by Local Logic, commissioned by the Québec Institute for Urban Development (IDU), noted that places in Canada with a lower rate of car use have a density of over 8,000 people per square kilometre.

In the wake of its Policy on Architecture and Land Use, the Québec government will soon implement an action plan aimed at reducing car travel and urban sprawl, and protecting farmland and biodiversity. Cities will then organize public consultations to help in drafting appropriate urban development plans.

If the past is anything to go by, despite those consultations it should come as no surprise to see that, once projects are authorized, neighbours in the immediate vicinity criticize them, claiming that they will undermine the appearance and value of the neighbourhood, conveniently forgetting that the goal of previous consultations was to improve the urban milieu. In the name of "not in my backyard", citizens and elected officials can postpone change indefinitely. The current positions regarding the Fairview Forest protests in Pointe-Claire and the proposed Bridge-Bonaventure project just south of downtown Montréal are only the most recent examples.

Although major studies and consultations have concluded that there is a need to increase the supply of all types of housing units (including social and affordable housing), and to densify transit corridors, consultations at the local level will readily discredit the policies being pursued.

By no means should consultations be eliminated, for many development projects have benefited from them. On the contrary, for the sake of consistency we believe that all consultations should be valued, both at the local, grassroots level and at the broader, more regional level.

The transformation of the urban framework required by the climate crisis will change the existing living environment, which in understandable and is indeed the goal. Public decision–makers must be clear about their objectives and do everything possible to achieve them. As the popular saying has it: We must walk the talk.

Avenues To Consider

A first step would be to draft a broad overall policy with precise provincial and regional objectives, so as to encourage compliance at the local level. Second, the mandate of the Québec Municipal Commission should be strengthened to ensure that the compliance audit includes a consistency analysis that forces local authorities to act in the direction outlined in the overall policy.

Another option would be legislation to make the public consultation procedure granted to municipalities in 2017 applicable all across Québec. That request was made, but was not adopted at the local level. Rather than a referendum, another option aims to respond to what Régis Labaume called an "undemocratic process" that "only serves the interests of a minority of opponents" (RadioCanada, 14 February 2017). Working together, the Québec government and municipal authorities can now devise a public consultation framework more likely to give more citizens access to the process, an opportunity for more voices to be heard.

If that option is not selected, the referendum option would be maintained, but it must become much more representative. Rather than consulting only the neighbours in the immediate vicinity of a project, it would be more democratic to plan for consultations throughout the borough or the neighbourhood. Moreover, given that the intent behind the referendum is to overturn the will of democratic entities, it would be more legitimate to insist on a more substantial number of signatures required for the referendum option, and a vote of more than 50% of registered voters.

More simply, consultations could be better supported. For cities with organizations like the Montréal Public Consultation Office (OCPM) and other groups that organize public information events, they should insist on the publication of the opinion of experts and independent sources. That would help in analyzing the position of locals in terms of the overall policy.

Authorities are calling for the decarbonization of buildings to address the climate crisis. In order to be consistent, for that same reason they need to contribute to efforts to transform our living environments. It is up to them to ensure that this takes place... right in our backyards.

Jean-Marc Fournier