Banks, banks, coastline: so many words to describe a place where it is good to recharge your batteries and put your feet, a boat or your fishing rod in the water. It is also a place of convergence between water and earth where many living creatures reside. At the dawn of COP15 – Conference of the Parties on Biodiversity which takes place from December 7 to 19 in Montreal, we invite you to follow us to its neighbor, Laval, which, thanks to its numerous public banks, has the potential to become a model of territorial planning promoting biodiversity on condition of allocate the necessary investments.
Insularity full of potential, but poorly exploited
Laval has no less than 45 public banks accessible to all, which represents 10% of its coastline. Unfortunately, several of them have a layout that is not conducive to the living environments of terrestrial and aquatic species. This is what we observed during a visit of a dozen of them in the company of the former director of the CRE of Laval, Guy Garand.
Too often, we could see steep banks, a lack of plant cover or embankment, compromising the connectivity between environments or the quality of these environments.
These banks border the Prairie River or the Thousand Islands River, in which there are more than 65 species of fish, including the copper redhorse, an endangered species. Two protected areas also aim to conserve its fauna and flora: the Île-Garth ecological reserve and the Rivière-des-Mille-Îles Park. Ville de Laval wishes to multiply its surface area by 20, demonstrating its desire to do better in terms of environmental protection.
Many of these banks were developed a long time ago. We can understand that environmental concerns were not yet up to date, and that expertise was not where it can be today. That said, the banks of the Parc de la Rivière-des-Mille-Îles do not respect the best practices promoting biodiversity even though they were developed in 2021. For example, a carpet prevents vegetation from growing and a bicycle path in gravel was erected, which generates a transport of sediment towards the river in spring when its level rises rapidly.
COP15: a key moment for the future of species
In a context of adaptation to climate change and the biodiversity crisis, the City of Laval would benefit from naturalizing these banks quickly in order to make them new refuges for living things as well as resilient areas in the face of recurring floods in spring.
We know from a reliable source that the redevelopment of the banks is on the cards for the City of Laval in the context of the Green and blue frame, “a structured network of natural environments developed for recreational tourism purposes in an integrated and global perspective” managed by the metropolitan community of Montreal (CMM). We know that the City has good intentions, that it has a solid environment department and an equally solid network of partners such as the CRE of Laval. We can't wait to see this project come to fruition.
One thing is certain, COP15 represents a golden opportunity for Canada to adopt an ambitious global biodiversity framework that will have the power to serve as an example to provinces, cities and municipalities.
Recommendations from the COP15 Collective regarding banks
One of recommendations of the COP15 Collective, formed by more than 60 civil society organizations, is structured precisely around territorial planning (target 1) so as to give primacy to the preservation of biodiversity in territorial planning, in order to prevent artificialization in anthropized environments and ensure the achievement of international targets in terms of ecological connectivity and protection.
The restoration of a minimum of 20% of degraded ecosystems by 2030, by prioritizing the habitats of native species, wetlands and riparian environments as well as natural spaces near large cities, is also part of the requests (target 2) .
But this land development and restoration must be done in harmony with the population's desire to maintain access to water. In fact, access to nature also fits into the global biodiversity framework (target 12). The COP15 Collective recommends the creation of new urban parks in order to offer all citizens access to local natural environments within 300 meters of their homes, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO ) and promote public access to watercourses.
These targets, which will be discussed during COP15, could become an inspiration for the City of Laval and other municipalities to take concrete actions to prioritize living things before any other form of interest. On condition of deploying the necessary financial and organizational resources, within the right deadlines.
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