Green Party of Canada submission to Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy

In 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit (The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development – UNCED), Canada signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Within six months, Canada ratified the treaty – the first industrialised country to do so.

In that treaty, we pledged to cut emissions and plan for adaptation. So far, we have gone in the wrong direction on emissions. In 2019, the last year for which we have statistics, Canada was 13% above 1990 levels. The drop in total emissions of approximately 9% between 2019 and 2020 was largely due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) confirms that it expects emissions to have risen between 2020 and 2021. We must stop adding and start subtracting our emissions. We are still the worst performer in the G-7.

That poor record is matched by our lamentably slow pace in adapting to those levels of climate change we can no longer avoid.

We committed in 1992, and again in the Paris Agreement, to act on adaptation.

Only now, thirty years later, has Canada committed to developing a national adaptation strategy.

Click here to read the full submission.

Supplementary materials: