When the Winds of Change Blow, Some People Build Walls and Others Build Windmills
Clean technologies drive sustainability by addressing climate and biodiversity crises while boosting economic growth. Isabelle Dubé-Côté, President and Chief Executive Officer at Écotech Québec, discusses how innovation is key to tackling interconnected challenges holistically as climate change and biodiversity loss are deeply linked, requiring integrated solutions.
Clean Technologies: A Gateway to a Sustainable Future
Clean technologies are central to tackling both the climate and biodiversity crises, but their potential extends far beyond these pressing issues. They also provide a foundation for increasing efficiency and boosting productivity, which is crucial to position Canada even more competitively on the global scene.
As we turn our attention to clean technologies, it is clear that these solutions offer not only environmental benefits but also significant economic advantages. More importantly, we must recognize that clean technologies are, at their core, innovations.
By embracing these innovations, we can limit humanity’s ecological footprint while simultaneously fostering ecosystem sustainability. Clean technologies are not just essential for addressing climate and biodiversity concerns; they are also key to driving sustainable economic growth in a world where these issues are increasingly inseparable from our economic future.
To achieve this innovative path to a sustainable climate, biodiversity, and economy, we need widespread innovation across all industry.
“Clean technologies are not just essential for addressing climate and biodiversity concerns; they are also key to driving sustainable economic growth in a world where these issues are increasingly inseparable from our economic future”
-Isabelle Dubé-Côté
The Role of Innovation in Addressing Climate, Biodiversity and Productivity Challenges
To compete effectively on the global stage and enhance our productivity as a nation, we need a bold, forward-thinking innovation agenda. This agenda must also be comprehensive, addressing multiple interconnected challenges at once if we want to be able to reduce our exposure and future costs related to the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss.
Where some see constraints, others see opportunities. To achieve our goals, we will need to reduce our use of resources by adopting more efficient systems and uncovering new opportunities to revalue outputs. We will need to improve conditions for natural ecosystems to thrive and do “their job”. We will need to reduce the impact of our production and consumption all together. This doesn’t mean slowing down progress. This means, amongst other things, finding smarter ways to do things better, faster, and more sustainably.
Interconnected Challenges: Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss and Global Uncertainty
The COP29 on Climate Change and COP16 on Biodiversity took place at the end of 2024. In both cases, with mixed results despite the urgent need to advance actions addressing climate change and biodiversity loss.
This is just one demonstration of how the two issues are far too often addressed separately and it raises the question of whether a better integration of these crises could provide a more coherent and effective response to these interconnected crises.
There is, of course, a deep and fundamental connection between climate and biodiversity. Climate change directly affects biodiversity, serving as a key driver that increasingly amplifies the impact of other threats to nature and human well-being. This change disrupts natural habitats, force species to migrate or adapt, and can lead to extinctions.
Conversely, the loss of biodiversity affects ecosystems’ ability to regulate the climate, as healthy ecosystems can provide 37% of the mitigation needed to limit global temperature rise. When ecosystems are destroyed, not only is their capacity to capture carbon reduced, but massive amounts of stored CO2 are also released, exacerbating climate change.
There is a general imbalance in the focus between climate change and biodiversity loss. For the COP Biodiversity: longer cycles between COPs, less media coverage, fewer members of international delegations (though Canada and Quebec are usually well represented). Biodiversity remains a less known and understood subject. This may be because it is a more challenging issue to understand, to measure and to communicate than concepts like ‘2 degrees’ or the ‘ozone hole,’ which distill complex, multifactorial problems into more digestible ideas.
These two crises are inextricably linked, thus addressing them simultaneously and in an integrated way could multiply the benefits. However, efforts to tackle them have often occurred in separate silos. The same way, looking at various solutions, such a clean technology, must be done with a holistic view and not in silo.
“There is a general imbalance in the focus between climate change and biodiversity loss”
-Isabelle Dubé-Côté
Innovation as the Bridge Between Crisis and Opportunity
While clean technologies alone cannot solve all challenges related to climate changes and biodiversity loss, they are indispensable in achieving our climate and biodiversity goals, as well as our competitivity objectives. And to overcoming these intertwined challenges, we must adopt a holistic approach.
The challenges posed by climate change and biodiversity loss are among the greatest of our time, and they are inextricably linked. However, with innovation as our guide, we can turn these crises into opportunities for positive change. By aligning our efforts to tackle climate change, preserve biodiversity, and boost productivity, we can create a healthier, safer environment for both current and future generations.
The technologies are already here and continue to be developed, and they respond to a real market need — what we need now is the collective will to implement them. As we face this monumental challenge, let us remember that when the winds of change blow, we must not build walls to keep it out, but build windmills to harness its power.
