NOTICE: Statement Regarding Northern Gateway Pipeline
Recent media articles have implied that Coast Opportunity Funds has provided $16 million to First Nations to oppose the Northern Gateway Pipeline project. That is absolutely incorrect.
Coast Opportunity Funds, an independent BC organization, is a $120 million fund established in 2007 to support conservation and sustainable economic development projects by the First Nations of the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii. The federal and BC governments contributed $60 million to the economic development fund, and philanthropic foundations contributed $60 million to supporting conservation projects.
Click here to read the 2007 press release by the Government of Canada and the BC Government announcing the creation of Coast Opportunity Funds and the governments' objectives for coastal BC and the Great Bear Rainforest.
More than a decade of discussions took place prior to 2007 between First Nations, governments, the forestry industry and conservation groups in the region looking for a way to end years of conflict over logging and meet the interests of all of those groups. The creation of Coast Opportunity Funds was a critical part of the solution, together with the signing of numerous land use planning agreements between First Nations and the BC government.
More than 80 percent of the awards to date (totalling $25 million) have been invested in the government-funded economic development projects, such as tourism businesses, shellfish aquaculture, and forestry. Conservation funding to date has been spent on projects such as creation of resource stewardship institutions.
In making the awards, Coast Funds has no authority to have regard to the First Nations’ stance on matters such as the Northern Gateway Pipeline or any other unrelated issue of that nature,
and has never done so.
Merv Child, Chair
Coast Opportunity Funds
Coast Opportunity Funds is a unique organization born in 2007 out of mutual recognition by conservationists, First Nations governments, resource industries and governments alike that a sustainable economy is vital to conservation efforts in the Central Coast, North Coast and Haida Gwaii areas of the Great Bear Rainforest of coastal British Columbia.
Why is this so important?
First Nations communities have cared for and depended on their traditional territories within this region for their cultural, social and economic wellbeing since time immemorial. The region also has compelling conservation values. The Great Bear Rainforest is a magnificent old growth forest ecosystem representing one-quarter of the world’s remaining coastal temperate rainforest, and supporting wild Pacific salmon, grizzly bears, wolves and the white Kermode or “spirit” bear among many other species.
Protection of these unique territories and the social and cultural wellbeing of the people who depend upon them is vital. Coast Opportunity Funds was created to make the vital connection between sustainable development projects that embrace conservation values; the social, cultural and economic wellbeing of the First Nations communities; and long term conservation of the region.
A Unique Vision
Designed as a global model of what conservation must become - an inherent part of healthy economies, environments and cultures – our Conservation and Economic Development Funds are dedicated to empowering the First Nations in the Central and North Coasts and Haida Gwaii in achieving healthy and vibrant economies and communities in partnership with the long term protection of their homelands for the benefit of future generations.