PROTECTED AREAS - AS A NATURE-BASED CLIMATE SOLUTION

» The Hudson Bay Lowlands, the second largest intact peatland complex in the world, sequester 74.6 Mt of CO2 per year, equivalent to 11% of Canada’s total emissions in 2020, and prevent the release of the 30 Gt of carbon that is stored34. [...] In 2016, 20.2% of the terrestrial area and 4.7% of the marine area of the circum- polar Arctic was protected i103. [...] However, there needs to be greater emphasis on the specific role of protected areas in preventing the release of stored carbon, maintaining the ability of ecosystems to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere, ensuring the permanence of restored areas, and realizing the benefits for biodiversity, water and food security, and other ecosystem services. [...] This includes national and regional maps of the overlap between carbon-density and biodiversity, best locations for ecological corridors, identification of climate refugia on land and in the coastal area, improved analysis of the extent and role of Canada’s blue carbon ecosystems, the coverage of protected areas in Canada’s most productive old-growth forests, blue carbon ecosystems, peatlands, and. [...] Areas in need of investments include: mapping the remaining saltmarshes and eelgrass beds as well as mapping the biodi- versity/carbon-density overlay in marine areas; quantifying the carbon stored in and sequestered by Canada’s coastal marine systems, including in their sediment; iden- tifying key marine areas for biodiversity; and identifying the relationship between carbon and biodiversity in t.