Biodiversity Conservation planning Natural resource development

WCS Canada Comments: Draft Canadian Sustainable Finance Taxonomy Methodology Report

Goodday, V. & Ray, J.

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WCS Canada's response to the draft Methodology Report for the Sustainable Finance Taxonomy.

Key points

• Canada is developing a Sustainable Finance Taxonomy, which has the potential to shape how economic activity affects nature for decades to come. This is the first formal opportunity for the public to inform the design of the taxonomy.
• Our comments focus specifically on opportunities to strengthen the treatment of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity within the methodology.
• WCS Canada calls for the taxonomy to be risk-based, with scientifically credible biodiversity safeguards, focused on ecological outcomes rather than process completion, and to go beyond Canadian law where necessary to ensure the protection of biodiversity and ecosystems.
• To preserve the credibility of the taxonomy, activities should ultimately be required to meet all applicable "do-no-significant-harm" criteria. This is particularly important for biodiversity and ecosystem protection, where some forms of harm are fundamentally incompatible with classification as "contributing to sustainability".
• We propose a phased-in approach to achieve this rigour and offer specific suggestions for biodiversity-related "do-no-significant-harm" criteria.

Recommended citation

Goodday, V. & Ray, J. (2026). WCS Canada Comments: Draft Canadian Sustainable Finance Taxonomy Methodology Report. Wildlife Conservation Society Canada [WCS Canada]. https://wcscanada.org/resources/wcs-canada-comments-draft-canadian-sustainable-finance-taxonomy-methodology-report/