BC Business
Founders Christina Munck and Eric Peterson have made their final donation to the charitable organization
It’s 2024 and the drivers of climate change are in full force, making it harder and harder for countries to protect their natural treasures. Bangladesh, for example, is home to the world’s largest uninterrupted sea beach, and, together with India, it also houses the largest mangrove forest in the world. Yet recent articles like “Cox’s Bazar: Longest beach or biggest dumpster?” and “Loss and Damage in the Sundarbans” paints a bleak picture of what the cost of economic development looks like. (Not to mention deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, which, as Time Magazine puts it, is disappearing right in front of our eyes.)
In a world so apparently doomed, British Columbia tells a different story. We’ve seen several instances of large gifts being made to protect the environment (like when tech entrepreneur Dax Dasilva gave $14.5 million to the BC Parks Foundation in 2022), and today, the Campbell River-based Tula Foundation announced that founders Christina Munck and Eric Peterson are donating $92 million to support the charity’s efforts to tackle issues that concern us all (including, of course, those related to the environment).
This is the last of the “windfall” Peterson received from selling Mitra (his medical imaging company) in 2001 and the last donation that the couple will make to the organization. When they decided to start Tula in 2001, they “wanted a name that was symbolic and that didn’t tie us to anything specific,” said Peterson. “Tula was short, easy to pronounce, and it was the name of one of our dogs.”
Since then, the organization has taken science-backed measures to address issues around the world, from coastal biodiversity to public health crises. Peterson and Munck established the Hakai Institute, for example, as a division of Tula on Calvert Island to advance coastal research in B.C.
Tula also announced that it will transfer two parcels of land (totalling 55 acres) to the BC Parks Foundation, which will be incorporated onto the Hakai Lúxvbálís Conservancy (the largest provincial marine protected area on our coast, collaboratively managed by the Province of BC and Heiltsuk and Wuikinuxv First Nations).
During the announcement, Peterson touched on the importance of education when it comes to initiatives like these (hence the existence of institutions like Hakai). B.C. is lucky to have residents that understand the need to promote ecology, develop technology and conserve biodiversity at a time when places like Calvert Island, still untouched by commercial logging, are becoming increasingly hard to find. Stories like these position the province as a leader in stirring positive change, hopefully inspiring others to follow in its footsteps.
“Today we’re showing our support by tossing all the money left over to the Tula plane,” Peterson said during the announcement. It’ll keep Tula in the air for a while, he added, but it’s not enough for landing. “So this is our beginning to hand off the baton.”