Carney’s plan promises to protect 30% of Canada’s lands and waters by 2030, with billions in new spending and a pivotal role for Indigenous leadership.
Prime Minister Mark Carney launched Canada’s most ambitious conservation plan in a generation, pledging $3.8 billion to protect the country’s forests, oceans, and freshwater ecosystems. The strategy, A Force of Nature: Canada’s Strategy to Protect Nature, sets the agenda to nearly double protected terrestrial land and significantly expand marine conservation before the end of the decade.
The plan arrives at a tense moment globally, with biodiversity loss accelerating alongside climate change. Canada, the strategy notes, is not immune, and habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and increasingly destructive wildfires and floods are all bearing down on ecosystems that millions of Canadians depend on daily.
Pillars for a nature-rich nation.
The strategy is built upon three core pillars designed to align environmental protection with economic growth and social well-being:
The targets.
At the heart of the strategy is Canada’s commitment to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), which 195 countries agreed to in 2022, pledging to protect 30 percent of the world’s lands and waters by 2030, also known as the 30×30 target. Canada currently protects 14 percent of its land and 15.5 percent of its marine territory.
To close that gap, the federal government is committing to protecting at least 1.6 million square kilometres of additional land, an area 1.7 times the size of British Columbia, and roughly 715,000 square kilometres of additional ocean over the next four years. On land, the plan includes up to 10 new national parks, 15 new national urban parks, and four National Wildlife Areas. In Canada’s waters, the government is targeting up to 10 new national marine conservation areas and 14 new marine protected and conserved areas altogether.
Achieving 30×30 won’t happen through federal action alone. The federal government directly administers just six percent of Canada’s land, so the strategy leans heavily on partnerships with provinces, territories, municipalities, private landowners, non-profits, and most critically, Indigenous Peoples.
Indigenous leadership at the core.
The document is direct: there is no path to 30×30 without Indigenous leadership. The plan invests $231 million over five years to enhance Indigenous Guardians Programs, including a new Arctic Indigenous Guardians Program designed to support land stewardship and monitoring across Canada’s Far North while creating what the government describes as culturally meaningful jobs.
Two high-profile Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas are being advanced under the strategy. The Seal River Watershed in Manitoba, one of the world’s largest intact watersheds, home to wolverines, polar bears, grizzly bears, and caribou, is being developed in partnership with a four-nation Dene and Cree alliance. The Wiinipaakw National Marine Conservation Area in Eastern James Bay is being co-developed with the Cree Nation to protect a biodiversity-rich environment that provides critical habitat for migrating birds and marine mammals.
The strategy also builds on the landmark NWT: Our Land for the Future initiative, a $375-million agreement signed in July 2025 that brings together 21 Indigenous governments across the Northwest Territories, representing one of the largest Indigenous-led conservation commitments anywhere on the planet.
Where the money goes.
The $3.8 billion investment is spread across three pillars. The largest single allocation of $1.63 billion over five years is directed toward advancing conservation broadly, supporting Indigenous-led stewardship, launching the Canada Nature Protection Fund, and pairing protected areas with the data and mapping infrastructure needed for responsible development decisions. A further $444 million is targeted at expanding marine protected areas, and $266.7 million over 11 years will advance the two new flagship national protected areas.
For species recovery, $283 million over five years supports the protection of Canada’s 671 federally listed species at risk; up 188 percent from 233 listed in 2003. Salmon receive particular attention: $412.9 million is directed at restoring Pacific salmon populations and habitat, building on more than 12.5 million square metres already restored through the Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative, while $81.7 million targets wild Atlantic salmon recovery in roughly 50 rivers.
The strategy also earmarks $15 million to clean up ghost gear, like lost or abandoned fishing equipment, from Canadian waters, building on the 2,546 tonnes already removed since 2020.
Canadians and nature: a deep bond.
For most Canadians, the connection to nature is not abstract. Canada holds 20 percent of the world’s fresh water, 25 percent of its wetlands, and nearly a quarter of the global boreal forest. It’s approximately 80,000 species, and its vast coastline (the longest on earth) is not just an ecological statistic; it’s the backdrop of Canadian life. Parks Canada’s existing network alone, nearly twice the size of the United Kingdom, saw a 13 percent increase in visitation in 2025 following the introduction of the Canada Strong Pass, which returns for summer 2026, offering free access to national parks, historic sites, and marine conservation areas. Time in nature, research consistently shows, strengthens well-being, deepens community ties, and reinforces a sense of shared identity, something Canada’s leaders are increasingly framing as inseparable from national sovereignty and resilience.
Why business should pay attention.
The economic stakes of Canada’s nature strategy are substantial. Nature-based sectors like agriculture, forestry, mining, and fisheries generate roughly seven percent of Canada’s GDP, while the total value of ecosystem services provided by Canada’s nature has been estimated at no less than $3.6 trillion per year, more than double the country’s 2018 GDP. Canada’s boreal forests alone contribute an estimated $703 billion annually in services, including carbon storage and flood control, and the country’s wetlands provide approximately $225 billion per year in water quality and climate-related services.
To support industry, the strategy introduces a Building Canada Well pillar that explicitly frames conservation and development as compatible. By mapping biodiversity and deploying AI to identify Key Biodiversity Areas, the government aims to accelerate permitting and reduce project delays, giving investors and developers clearer, science-guided pathways to approval. The forthcoming Expert Taskforce on Natural Capital Accounting and Nature Financing, launching in spring 2026, will specifically develop recommendations to attract private capital into conservation, closing what is currently estimated as a global funding gap of over $1 trillion USD annually for biodiversity commitments.
A global signal.
Canada’s strategy is also a statement of international intent. The government has committed to ratifying the High Seas Treaty, which would advance protection of 30 percent of the world’s oceans, and to joining the Ocean Panel, a coalition of world leaders focused on sustainable ocean management. At a moment of global fragmentation, the Carney government is betting that Canada’s size, its natural wealth, and its partnership model can make it a credible leader in the race to reverse biodiversity loss, not just at home, but as a model for the world.
Invert Insights.
💡 While the 30% target is ambitious, the strategy makes one thing clear: there is no path to 30×30 without Indigenous leadership. As we know at Invert, Indigenous stewardship is key to successful climate planning. By pairing traditional conservation methods with innovative tools like Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs), which protect biodiversity in working landscapes like military bases or research forests, Canada aims to set a global pace for pragmatic environmental action.
💡 The launch of the strategy has been met with a complex mix of reactions, ranging from high-level praise to deep-seated skepticism. While international organizations like Audubon have applauded the historic funding for the Seal River Watershed and Indigenous Guardians programs, domestic critics have raised several red flags. Greenpeace Canada argued that the strategy remains extraction-first, warning that new parks cannot counteract ongoing resource exploitation. A primary point of contention is the heavy reliance on private capital and OECMs. Critics fear these measures could become paper parks that lack durable standards or, worse, allow continued industrial activities like logging within their boundaries. Furthermore, Conservative representatives dismissed the plan as a new bureaucracy to burn taxpayer money, predicting the government would still fail to meet its 2030 targets.
💡 This strategy is arguably the most favorable policy environment for nature-based carbon finance that Canada has produced. The sheer scale of land being brought under conservation, 1.6 million km² of new terrestrial area and hundreds of thousands of km² of ocean, represents a significant future pipeline of nature-based carbon projects. Peatlands, boreal forests, wetlands, and grasslands are all explicitly named as priority ecosystems, and these are the landscapes that generate high-quality carbon credits through avoided conversion, improved forest management, and blue carbon mechanisms. The federal government is explicit that it owns only six percent of Canadian land, and that achieving 30×30 requires provinces, territories, municipalities, private landowners, and the private sector to move. As the report shares, public funds alone won’t close the gap. The strategy is essentially a public signal that private and philanthropic capital is needed and welcome. The Canada Nature Protection Fund, the Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) Model, and the forthcoming task force are all mechanisms designed to crowd in exactly the kind of patient, outcomes-oriented capital that carbon project finance can provide.
