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CLIMATE Fish farms seek to grow after Liberals’ phase-out promise

by Charlie Smith

There could be more Atlantic salmon like the one above growing in open net pens if West Coast fish farms gain approval for their expansion plans. Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In the 2019 election campaign, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau let voters know that open net-pen salmon farming would come to an end in Broughton Archipelago, where open-net salmon farming is being phased out. “All proposed factory farm expansions should be denied by the government B.C. in 2025. In fact, this promise was included in the Liberal platform.

In a mandate letter to then–federal fisheries and oceans minister Bernadette Jordan in 2019, Trudeau followed up on this pledge by advising her to work with the province and Indigenous communities “to create a responsible transition from open net-pen salmon farming in coastal British Columbia waters by 2025”.

But four environmental groups issued a news release on November 30 objecting to “12 site expansions including one entirely new 4,400-metric tonne open-net salmon farm” in B.C.

The new site is slated to be developed between the Discovery Islands and the given their harm to wild salmon, the extremely poor returns of wild salmon and the federal government’s commitment to remove them by 2025,” Watershed Watch Salmon Society’s Stan Proboszcz said in the news release. Others groups that attached their names to the release were the David Suzuki Foundation, the Living Oceans Society, and Clayoquot Action. The federal government oversees changes to licences, according to Living Oceans Society executive director Karen Wristen. The provincial government plays a role when there are applications to create or expand farm sites, and the feds usually respond within one year. g

from previous page just over 1° C since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Sandford noted that this means the atmosphere is now capable of holding seven percent more water vapour than back then. If that temperature rises to 2° or 3° C above pre-industrial times, the atmosphere will hold 14 or 21 percent more water vapour. To Sandford, this rise in average global temperature is one of the reasons why we’re seeing such intense rainfalls in different parts of the world, including B.C.

“Rising temperatures have caused the water cycle to accelerate,” Sandford said. “Water is moving more quickly and more energetically through the global water cycle. And that is exactly the manifestation that we’re seeing as a result of climate change.”

According to him, a 4° C rise from pre-industrial times would amount to “living on a different planet”.

That’s not all. Water vapour is also a greenhouse gas, so as more of it is added to the atmosphere through evaporation from oceans, it traps more heat.

Another RMB book, The Climate Nexus: Water, Food, Energy and Biodiversity in a Changing World—one that Sandford cowrote with former senior B.C. government bureaucrat Jon O’Riordan—also highlighted changes to hydrological cycles. In addition, it warned of the links between degraded soils and even more carbon being released into the atmosphere.

Sandford cited UN reports suggesting that at current rates of soil decline, there might be just 60 years left before the agriculture sector will suffer irreparable harm. “The reverse is also true,” he added. “If we restore soil balance, we can draw [carbon] down from the atmosphere.”

Sandford declared that industrial agriculture, as it’s being practised nowadays, is “selfterminating”. And the breakdown of hydrological stationarity isn’t helping matters.

“You saw the impact on farmers in your region, which are just absolutely tragic,” Sandford said. “And that, unfortunately, is what we’re going to see more of. Welcome to the future.” g