Canada's oil sands are one of the largest oil deposits on Earth, located in the Athabasca, Cold Lake and Peace River regions of northern Alberta. The landscape is covered by rain-fed peatlands and transitional peat marshes along small streams. These peat marshes are valuable for water regulation, carbon storage in their soils and unique biodiversity. Extremely large carbon dioxide emissions are caused by the mining and processing of oil sands.

Mining completely destroys all natural features and functions. After mining stops, companies are required to restore the impacted area. closure, the Government of Alberta demands companies to restore the area. However, Restoration is hampered by rules that ignore the restoration of peat and other environmental services that previously existed.

Aims and activities

Wetlands International is very concerned about the use of oil sands for energy due to the environmental damage and climate change impacts.

Internationally, we raise our concerns with partner NGOs; for instance the European Union regarding their energy policies (see a letter sent on this).

In addition, Wetlands International advises Shell's operations in the Athabasca oil sands from the stage of planning up to and including the exit strategy of the project. The goal is to firstly limit impacts on wetlands , secondly mitigate as many impacts as possible and thirdly restore impacted areas and lastly compensate for any losses. 

The first stage in the collaboration focuses on compensation for impacts of existing operations. The role of Wetlands International will be to provide expertise on all ecosystem services and on using an ecosystem approach to the compensation. For this, we will not only take the immediate impacts on the area into account, but also wider impacts related to river basin or the global issue of CO2 emissions.  

The approach will build on internationally approved practices like those declared in the Ramsar Convention and the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD).

Contact: Tatiana Minaeva