Elizabeth May, MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands, Co-leader of the Green Party of Canada, and long time environmental activist joins Paul Beckwith in a discussion about the recent United Nations CBD-COP15 and UNFCCC-COP27 events. Elizabeth draws from years of experience to provide insightful historical context for the two treaties as well as her perspective on their outcomes.

This video was recorded on December 15th, 2022 and published on January 12th, 2023.

Some of the topics discussed:

– How since the Framework Convention on Climate Change was first signed in Rio in 1992, humanity has emitted more greenhouse gases than from the time of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution up to when the convention was signed.

– How the negotiations at these UN conferences are like a basketball game. One plays for 2 hours and the game is often decided at the last minute.

– How the climate crisis is the largest single threat to preserving species, and the single largest cause of potential extinctions.

– How Canada is no exception in that it continues to hack away at the forest cutting through old growth forest, poisoning biodiversity through our use of pesticides, and pursuing minerals underground getting forests out of the way to get them.

– How the target of 30% by 2030 is more complex than one might initially consider when a country’s biodiversity impact can be primarily caused by its consumption rather than what it is doing within its own borders since this consumption impacts other parts of the Earth.

– The importance of the indigenous peoples when one considers that 30% of the land base has to have no people on it. Should this mean we dispossess the Indigenous people from their lands in order to preserve biodiversity?

– How In terms of the goal of 30% by 2030, the biggest obstacle will be that those repositories of biodiversity, which have the most potential for us to set aside and preserve, are in developing countries where it’s simply not possible for biodiversity to be set aside without financing to ensure that those countries are compensated for what they give up in development.

– And much more . . .

Links:
– COP15 ends with landmark biodiversity agreement
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories…

– UN Biodiversity Conference CBD-COP15 Scores Historic Goal for Nature
https://www.natureunited.ca/newsroom/…

– Former Environment Minister, Green Party of Canada and Green Coaltion call on Canada to set an example
Canada and Green Coalition call on Canada to set an example and be a leader on biodiversity
https://www.greenparty.ca/en/media-re…

– Philippines delegate refuses to eat until action on climate change ‘madness’
https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/12/world/…

– Climate Endgame (CEF Video)

– Canada in deepwater: behind the Trudeau government’s approval of the Bay du Nord development project
https://thenarwhal.ca/bay-du-nord-new…

Special Guest:
Elizabeth May – Canadian politician, environmentalist, author, activist, and lawyer who is serving as the leader of the Green Party of Canada since 2022, and previously served as the leader from 2006 to 2019. She has been the member of Parliament (MP) for Saanich—Gulf Islands since 2011. May is the longest serving female leader of a Canadian federal party.
.
Regular Panelist:
Paul Beckwith – Climate Systems Scientist. Professor at the University of Ottawa in the Paleoclimatology Laboratory as well as at Carleton University

Video Production:
Charles Gregoire – Electrical Engineer, Webmaster and IT prime for FacingFuture.Earth & the Climate Emergency Forum; Climate Reality Leader

Heidi Brault – Video production and website assistant, Organizer and convener, Metadata technician, COP26 team lead for FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum; BA (Psychology); Climate Reality Leader

Acknowledgement:
We’d like to acknowledge these two organizations without which our attendance at COP15 in Montréal, Quebec, Canada, would not have been possible.
– Vita Sapien – https://vitasapien.org/
– Facing Future – https://www.facingfuture.earth/

Our Website:
https://climateemergencyforum.org/

Attributions:
Background Music:
– Title: Through the City II
– Author: Crowander
– Source: Free Music Archive
– License: CC BY-NC 4.0

Image and Video: https://climateemergencyforum.org/ass…

The post Elizabeth May in Conversation with Paul Beckwith – At COP15 in Montréal appeared first on Elizabeth May.

“Mr President, Namibia would like to congratulate you on crafting a very balanced package deal which makes everyone equally unhappy – which is a secret to reaching agreement in the UN system…

I want to start by saying that I have great sympathy for my colleague from the DRC because he comes from probably one of the most brutalized countries in the world. Those of you who read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness would recall that the Belgium colonizers chopped off the hands of people for not tapping enough rubber to meet their quotas.

And Mr President, that colonial injustice that is exemplified by what happened in the Congo is the origin of all the problems that we have encountered in this convention and in the relationship between humanity and biodiversity. We have suffered a systemic trauma that has disrupted the bond between humans and nature. That have led some countries to query whether we can include in this instrument a metaphor, a wholesome metaphor, like Mother Earth. The political objection to the idea that the earth is our mother!

Mr President if we are to have any hope at all of living in harmony with nature by 2050, we need to acknowledge that the global economic and financial architecture that came out of the violence of colonization, of resource extraction, of plantation agriculture, of colonialism to drive markets for the manufactures of the countries that are today rich and control the resources of the world. The whole developed vs developing narrative which has bedeviled our consultation forums for so many years needs a much more comprehensive and holistic solution than what we have managed to craft in this biodiversity framework.

[This agreement] is not the final step, it is not enough to live in harmony with nature by 2050. (…) Because we are very damaged, we are very sick. Our relationship with the natural world is in real, serious danger and that endangers all of life on this planet. Mr Chairman, thank you again for your leadership, thank you everyone for the adoption of this framework, but there’s a lot more work to do.”

The post A powerful statement from COP15 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

December 20, 2022

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) can be seen as the poorer sister of the better-known UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

They are twins, both born in June 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit. The CBD was nearly stillborn – or rather nearly drowned at birth. Then-US President George H. W. Bush tried to kill it on instructions from Big Pharma. The industry feared the CDB commitment to “equitable sharing of benefits” from drug discoveries reaped from the developing world’s biodiversity might cut in to their monstrous profits. For instance, before the CBD, when Madagascar rainforests yielded the drug that saved children suffering with leukemia, derived from the rosy periwinkle, the pharmaceutical industry raked in the profits but Madagascar received no benefit. The CBD created a multilateral framework to create that financial incentive to protect the biological diversity of such natural areas.

But in 1992, when the US pulled away, then- Prime Minister Brian Mulroney stepped up.  He phoned his ambassador for the environment, a high-level position created by Mulroney that was eliminated by former prime minister Stephen Harper. Ambassador Arthur Campeau did not hesitate to share his advice: save the treaty. And Mulroney did. Canada committed to the treaty, stopping a slide in support.

Once Bill Clinton became President, the US signed the treaty, but never tried to obtain the two-thirds vote from the Senate necessary to ratify it under the US Constitution. The US is still not a party to the CBD.

It is remarkable and very fortunate that Bush got the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) through the Senate before leaving office. No one else could have. But the CBD has been accepted by all UN members, except the United States.

The scale and urgency of the UNFCCC versus CBD is easy to spot — the climate COPs are annual; CBD bi-annual. So COP27 on climate just happened in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, while the Montreal CBD COP was only the15th.

This COP also faced serious headwinds. Originally scheduled for September 2020 in Kunming China, COP15 was delayed time and time again due to COVID.   Work on negotiating the Global Biodiversity Framework actually began four years ago. Partial meetings and hybrid formats have been tried to advance the agenda. Only six months ago did parties realize an in-person CBD COP was desperately needed. Canada has hosted the Montreal secretariat for the CBD since the mid- 1990s, a COP2 decision taken in recognition of Mulroney saving the treaty, but we have never hosted a COP. With Canada agreeing to host in Montreal only six months ago, preparations have been frantic in both negotiation and readying the Palais des Congrès. Without Montreal as host city, COP15 would have been delayed once again by Chinese COVID restrictions.

The success of these negotiations — and they were far more successful than even the most optimistic negotiator had imagined — was largely due to the personal partnership between Guilbeault and Huang.

COP15 was by far the largest and most critical CBD COP ever.

One major complexity of COP15 was that while Canada provided the physical space in Montreal, China was the chair (or in UN terms “president” of COP).

It was not a foregone conclusion that Chinese Environment Minister Huang Runqiu would be an effective chair, nor that he and his Canadian counterpart, Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault, would be capable of working well together.

The success of these negotiations — and they were far more successful than even the most optimistic negotiator had imagined — was largely due to the personal partnership between Guilbeault and Huang. Given the increasing tensions between China and Canada, this partnership was as unlikely as it was productive.

Guilbeault, often visibly uncomfortable with his role as defender of new fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure, was in his element at COP15. (By way of disclosure, I’m a long-standing personal friend of Gilbeault, though I often differ with Guilbeault the Minister.) Biodiversity is not his subject area, but campaigning is.  He worked tirelessly to bridge divides. He ignored some of the bureaucratic and diplomatic logjams by contacting ministers through WhatsApp, surprising Canadian negotiators. He and the Chinese presidency met frequently and shared the arm-twisting through the very different network of friends and allies that each country enjoys.

The resulting framework is 14 pages long but hugely complex in its many side documents on monitoring, reporting, review and other aspects of the deal. It was an unusual process for a COP, as the president’s text, worked through with a handful of North and South ministers, was released early on Sunday morning as a “take it or leave it” package. I spoke with key delegates and ministers who were amazed at how many of their bottom-line issues were reflected in the text. As the lead negotiator for Namibia commented at the 3:30 am session as the agreements were gaveled through, it was “a very balanced package deal which makes everyone equally unhappy.”

We have new agreements on everything from genetic sequencing and digital records of genetic diversity to financing goals, to protecting 30 percent of global biodiversity in the world’s lands and oceans by 2030, to 23 new and specific environmental targets.

These replace the 2010 Aichi targets that fell due in 2020, none achieved and on which not even one country fully delivered. The new agreement calls for less pollution and reduced pesticide use. It underscores the critical role of Indigenous peoples and Indigenous sovereignty. It calls for a new relationship between humanity and Mother Earth. While “Mother Earth” is mentioned in the Paris Agreement preamble, this is the first agreement where language about the Earth as our mother is raised to the level of critical text. The newly named “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” does not call for us to end matricide, but the meaning is clear. We have to stop abusing and killing our only home. Our Mother Earth.

The last global environment agreement that did have enforcement mechanisms was the Montreal Protocol, which was the last environmental treaty to actually deliver necessary results – it saved the ozone layer.  

Like the climate treaty, this deal does not have teeth. There are no enforcement mechanisms. The last global environment agreement that did have enforcement mechanisms was the Montreal Protocol, which was the last environmental treaty to actually deliver necessary results – it saved the ozone layer.

As is often the case in achieving UN consensus, in the final moments, one country tries to object and block agreement. In the UNFCCC COP-3 in Kyoto it was Saudi Arabia. At COP-11 (also held at Palais des Congrès in Montreal), it was Russia; at COP-21 in Paris, it was Venezuela.

This time, at nearly 4 am, it was the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), pleading for more help for the poorest nations and their vast biodiversity.

And as is the usual case, the delegates rallied around the draft, cheering for the one objecting nation to be ignored. And thus, Huang Runqiu brought down the gavel to a standing ovation and jubilation.

But the DRC is not Saudi Arabia, nor Russia, and riding roughshod over its pleas will leave a bad taste in the mouth, even for those of us cheering.

So, I will close with the extraordinary words of the Namibian representative, Pierre Du Plessis:

“I want to start by saying that I have great sympathy for my colleague from the DRC because he comes from probably one of the most brutalized countries in the world. Those of you who read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness would recall that the Belgium colonizers chopped off the hands of people for not tapping enough rubber to meet their quotas.

“And Mr. President, that colonial injustice that is exemplified by what happened in the Congo is the origin of all the problems that we have encountered in this convention and in the relationship between humanity and biodiversity. We have suffered a systemic trauma that has disrupted the bond between humans and nature. That have led some countries to query whether we can include in this instrument a metaphor, a wholesome metaphor, like ‘Mother Earth.’ The political objection to the idea that the earth is our mother!

“If we are to have any hope at all of living in harmony with nature by 2050, we need to acknowledge that the global economic and financial architecture that came out of the violence of colonization, of resource extraction, of plantation agriculture, of colonialism to drive markets for the manufactures of the countries that are today rich and control the resources of the world. The whole developed versus developing narrative which has bedeviled our consultation forums for so many years needs a much more comprehensive and holistic solution than what we have managed to craft in this biodiversity framework.

“(This agreement) is not the final step, it is not enough to live in harmony with nature by 2050. (…) Because we are very damaged, we are very sick. Our relationship with the natural world is in real, serious danger and that endangers all of life on this planet. Mr. Chairman, thank you again for your leadership, thank you everyone for the adoption of this framework, but there’s a lot more work to do.”

Contributing Writer Elizabeth May is the MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands and leader of the Green Party of Canada, working with Jonathan Pedneault in transition to co-leadership. 

The post While the World Cup Distracted Millions, Mother Earth Scored appeared first on Elizabeth May.

I learned climate science from Environment Canada scientists back in the 1980s when I worked for the federal Minister of Environment. No one thought there was controversy about the basic science as we organized the first major international conference on the threat in Toronto in June 1988. The myth of doubt had not yet been invented, nor heavily financed to delay action.

Procrastination, corporate lobbying and lack of political will has led to a tragic loss of more than two decades when actions would have been easier, greenhouse gases could have been reduced before hitting the current 400 parts per million (ppm), before condemning glaciers and sea ice and coral reefs and other ecosystems to dangerous levels of damage. Over the previous one million years, carbon dioxide concentrations never exceeded 280 ppm. Humanity has already changed the chemistry of the atmosphere, just as carbon dioxide mixing with ocean water is changing the acidity of our oceans.

The process of negotiating a treaty to move the world to a low-carbon future has been on-going since 1992. The third Conference of the Parties (COP3) took place in Kyoto, giving the protocol its name. Kyoto in its second phase still exists, but Canada dealt it several mortal blows.

The next big negotiation deadline was 2009 at COP15 in Copenhagen. That COP was a train wreck of an event. It sowed deep seeds of distrust as President Barack Obama took a handful of big industrialized countries, plus China, into a hotel room – outside the integrity and transparency of the UN process – and cooked up the bogus “Copenhagen Accord.” The targets were not legally binding but “politically binding.” It was accompanied with a blatant attempt to bribe the developing world into not protesting rising seas and droughts by providing a new Green Climate Fund, with promises to ramp up to $100 billion/year by 2020.

Prime Minister Harper personally attended Copenhagen, although he was not present as Obama crafted the back-room deal. Harper agreed to adopt the same target as the United States – 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. This amounted to the second weakening of Canada’s pledge since Harper became prime minister.

While Obama has delivered the US pledge, sadly, Canada has totally missed the target. Using Environment Canada’s own figures, Canada is set to miss its Copenhagen target of 126MT reductions by 116MT. With only five years left before Harper’s pledge falls due, his administration has failed to establish any plan to meet it. It will be challenging for any government to meet that target now.

Meanwhile, the world’s scientific body reviewing climate action, the IPCC, found that even if all Copenhagen targets were met, the world would shoot past 2 degrees risking far more catastrophic impacts.

Much more dramatic action is required. In fact, the IPCC is now calling for the world to cease using fossil fuels for energy entirely by the end of this century. The ramping up of renewable and green sources of energy is urgent.

The global negotiations continue. The deadline for the acceptance of the treaty that failed in Copenhagen will be next year at COP21 in Paris. COP20 last December in Lima was supposed to create an ambitious agenda propelling the last phase of negotiations forward. The Peoples Climate March and UN Climate Leaders Summit last September were all about injecting momentum into Lima. Still, COP20 fell far short of what is needed.

The tensions created by Copenhagen are still with us. At COP20, industrialized countries wanted the developing world to accept texts leaving out the litany of broken promises from industrialized countries, while giving the rich a weak set of self-selected targets of dubious enforceability. The Lima negotiation’s overtime hours only slightly improved a weak decision. References to assistance to developing countries and a call for more action for industrialized countries were mere sops to the chorus of complaints.

Before next year’s COP in Paris, Canada’s elections will likely deliver a new Prime Minister with a Parliament with a greener hue. It is my hope that the new Parliament, post-2015 election, will place Canada in the lead. We can be the country that saves the Paris talks. We know how to do this. Canadian negotiators, given proper instructions to negotiate the clear, aggressive and equitable climate treaty the world needs, can do it.

Between now and December 2015, we have to focus on the parallel challenges – get our own house in order by implementing meaningful climate action domestically while being prepared to play the role of global leader we once delivered for the world. Greens will ensure that climate is a key issue in the upcoming election.

Originally published in the HillTimes.

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If you have had any exposure to the talking points repeated, ad nauseum, by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Environment Minister Peter Kent, and Michelle Rempel (Kent’s Parliamentary secretary) on Canada’s actions in reducing Greenhouse gases (GHG), you will have heard that ‘Canada is half way to our Copenhagen target.’ This is the target adopted by Stephen Harper when he attended the climate talks, COP15, in 2009.

It represented the second time Harper weakened Canada’s target. The first, rejecting the Kyoto pledge (6% below 1990 levels by 2012) in 2006, was immediately after he became Prime minister. He cancelled the previous government’s climate plan, which actually would have gotten us quite close to the Kyoto target. Instead, he promised to reduce 2006 levels by 20% by 2020.

The United Nations gathering in Copenhagen was tragically hijacked by a backroom deal, orchestrated by the US, called the ‘Copenhagen Accord.’ Unlike the legally binding Kyoto protocol, The Copenhagen Accord was described as ‘politically binding.’ It also gave Stephen Harper a chance to weaken our target further by adopting the same one announced by Barack Obama – 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. As it happened, Canada’s emissions were higher in 2005 than in 2006—a convenient anomaly that further weakened our pledge.

As well, the Copenhagen Accord included a commitment from signing nations that their collective resolve must avoid allowing the global average temperatures to increase by 2ºC above what they were before the Industrial Revolution. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessed the collectivity of pledges by the Copenhagen Accord signatories and concluded that the pledges fell far short of avoiding the 2ºC threshold. No matter how you slice it, Copenhagen targets were too little, weak and inadequate.

So, it may be that we are inured to the idea that the target matters. Or it may be that our cognitive processes automatically reject the possibility that the whole government, including departmental reports, can be lying to us.

The February 15 update states: that ‘Canada’s 2020 emissions are projected to be about one-half of the way to the target.’ Before examining the actual claim that we are halfway to the target, let’s underscore the blazingly obvious point that the self-congratulatory sentence confirms—by the date the pledge is due, by the deadline year of 2020, we will have failed to achieve the goal.

Half of What?

Now, let’s look at that claim that in 2020 we will be half way there. In 2005 emissions were 740 Megatons (Mt). 17% of 740 is 126. So Harper’s pledge (17% below 2005 levels by 2020) means, that by 2020, Canada should have reduced by 126Mt.

But the emissions graph used in the Environment Canada report shows our 2020 emissions at 720Mt. Not tough math. 720 is 20 less than 740, and there isn’t any new math in the world that makes 20 half of 126.

So, how can they get away with even attempting to say that 720Mt is half-way to the target?

Well, they have thrown in a red herring.

The graph includes an estimate (the red line) of what they claim would have happened without government action—a ‘business as usual’ figure for 2020 of 850Mt. Not uninteresting, and perhaps of some use for other comparisons, if in fact, the estimate is based on any reasonable assumptions and methodologies. (We will have to guess on that because no set of assumptions or methodologies are disclosed).

To re-state the obvious, the Copenhagen pledge was straight-forward (although weak and inadequate) and no element of the Copenhagen target makes a business-as-usual figure relevant. The imaginary whopping big 850Mt that won’t happen is only useful in confusing the picture.

The Conservatives’ talking points also claim that they have reduced GHG emissions. And it is true that in 2010 emissions were down to 692Mt. This is explained by some provincial actions, but primarily was due to the world- wide recession.

I think it is unlikely that the Prime Minister would claim credit for the recession as a deliberate climate policy.

It is galling to hear the lie repeated over and over that the Conservative policies are responsible for reducing emissions. Especially as emissions are rising rapidly, slated to go from 692Mt in 2010 to 720Mt by 2020.

Maybe no one can absorb the numbers – admittedly, as I write this, I worry there are too many numbers. Environment Canada further complicates the picture by adjusting 2005 levels to 731Mt, making the 2020 reduction only 11Mt).

But the millions of tons of GHG Canada dumps into the global atmosphere really matter. Our trail of broken promises will be noticed, if not in Canada, around the world.

The post Missing the Copenhagen Target appeared first on Elizabeth May.

“It’s become a joke in the international environment and scientific community as they watch the antics of the Harper Conservatives who want to have it both ways – aggressively pushing non-renewable energy sources and taking credit for CO2 emission cuts,” commented Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, MP Saanich-Gulf Islands.  “No other government has managed such a combination, and the facts show the Conservatives haven’t either.”

Under the Copenhagen Accord, Canada committed to lowering its greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.

May pointed out that it is the provinces which deserve the credit for greenhouse gas emission cuts registered since last year – as they try to fill the sustainability gap left by the federal Conservatives.

At the same time, it is very important to realize that the Harper Conservatives actually adjusted the emission accounting rules this year.  They changed the “baseline” or goalpost in such a way that it appears they have made more progress than they have.

“Again, the Harper Conservatives aren’t playing by the rules.  Imagine a Canadian Olympic contender who cheated in order to look good – in front of the world.  This is what we are witnessing in the area of greenhouse emissions cuts by this gang,” said May.

“As Canadians experience the hottest summer on record, I’m sure they will not be convinced that Mr. Harper is making real progress in trying to avoid climate catastrophe – no matter how much they change the rules, twist the facts, and puff themselves up.”

The post Harper Conservatives’ Emission Cuts Are Just More Hot Air appeared first on Elizabeth May.

To give you a sense of the nail-biting finish, look at this photo (new tab), taken (not by me) in the wee hours of Sunday, December 11 as two weeks of negotiations, and three days of round the clock talks, hung by a thread.

Since 2005, climate talks have been moving along two tracks – decisions under the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (described as the Long-term Cooperative Action – or LCA – track) and under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.  The key difference between the two tracks is that the US is part of the 1992 FCCC, but not Kyoto.  All other countries are within Kyoto, but the support for a second commitment period has been waning. Sub-issues abound, from funding adaptation, to monitoring, to how to account for changes to forest cover. It is ultimately enormously complicated.  But it would be a mistake to think it is challenging primarily due to its complexity.  It is challenging because the weight of some of the biggest corporations in the world, Big Oil and Big Coal, have been blocking progress.

People talk about “the U.N.” as though it were a building, or a bureaucracy.  It is both, but it is in its workings, and failings, a collection of nations, and they are a collection of people.

This is what the U.N. looks like.  It is not institutional.  It is excruciatingly human.  Here you see the faces of the key movers of progress (or blockers of progress depending on where you sit) after many sleep-deprived hours.

Standing is the President of COP17, the woman who chaired all proceedings, formal and informal – South African Minister of International Relations, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane.  To her left, sits India’s Minister of Environment and chief climate negotiator, Jayanthi Natarajan.  Across from her, the blond woman in profile is Denmark’s former environment minister, the woman who unsuccessfully battled her own Prime Minister to try to avoid disaster in Copenhagen at COP15. (William Marsden’s new book, Fools Rule: Inside the Failed Politics of Climate Change Knopf Canada, has nailed down critical details of how and why COP15 went so very badly).  Connie Hedegaard left Danish politics soon after the Copenhagen train-wreck to take up the challenge of negotiating climate on behalf of the EU. 

There in that snapshot is the drama of our future in negotiation.  Three women working in English, not the first language of any of them, translation headsets abandoned on the table. In the end, it was the Brazilian minister who found the language that allowed the whole package of agreements to be approved (dubbed “weasel words” by The Economist, and not unjustly).  Instead of “legally binding” agreements under the LCA track, the Durban agreement sets out that the LCA commitments will be in the form of “a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force.”

Some have denounced Durban as a complete failure; others claim it was an historic break through.  In truth, it was a bit of both.  If this set of agreements were all we ever achieved to reduce emissions, human civilization would not have much hope of survival.  But if the negotiations had made no progress at all, our hope of future progress would be dashed.  As Gwynne Dyer commented in his analysis, Suicide Pact in Durban, http://gwynnedyer.com, “The outcome at Durban could have been even worse – a complete abandonment of the concept of legal obligations to restrict emissions – but it was very, very bad.”

What the EU,  low-lying island states, Africa and environmental groups all wanted was a legally binding second commitment period under Kyoto.  A second commitment period under Kyoto was also the sine qua non for China, Brazil and other growing economies to take on new commitments under the LCA track.   EU leadership gained the lifeline to Kyoto with a second commitment period, to begin January 1, 2013, avoiding any gap in legally mandated reductions. 

The weakness is obvious.  The targets for reductions on the order of 20-30% below 1990 levels by 2020, only apply to the European Union and a handful of other countries  — Norway, New Zealand and Australia.  

But what did the EU gain to win that second commitment period?  An LCA track decision for an all-inclusive set of reductions (having “legal force”) negotiated by 2015, to take effect by 2020. 

And here is where it is clear the negotiations failed. 2015 is too late to act and 2020 is certainly too late to avoid shooting way past those tipping points in the atmosphere that preclude civilization from having a chance. As one scientist put it to the BBC:

“The agreement here has not in itself taken us off the 4C path we are on, but by forcing countries for the first time to admit that their current policies are inadequate and must be strengthened by 2015, it has snatched 2C from the jaws of impossibility.

“At the same time it has re-established the principle that climate change should be tackled through international law, not national, voluntarism.” (Michael Jacobs, visiting professor at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in London, UK).

Lessons from Durban?  Kyoto still matters. For Canadians to help the global process, we need to reverse the letter of intent to withdraw from Kyoto, which will not take effect until December 31, 2012. Somehow, we need to mobilize a global public to take on the fossil fuel industry. There is still hope, but with each year’s delay, we have less time.  The atmosphere is not negotiating with humanity.  And time is not our friend.

Originally published in Island Tides,Vol 24, Number 1, Jan 12, 2012.

The post Durban and the road ahead appeared first on Elizabeth May.

I won’t likely be blogging for a bit until I get to Durban.  Leaving soon from Toronto to Heathrow, all day wait at Heathrow and another overnight flight to Johannesburg and then a few hours to get through customs and on to the last flight to Durban.

Why I don’t want to go —  I hate flying, cannot sleep on planes, had a hip replacement two months ago and sitting for a long time is a precursor to pain and not being able to walk for awhile, hate wasting the carbon in flying, and expect, when I get there, it will be a horrible experience until I get on the plane again to come home.

Why I think I have to go —  there is a chance I might be able to do some good. And given the enormity of the threat, I dare not take a chance of not being somewhere where I might do some good.

When I get there, no matter how brain dead or physically tired, the first task is to get to the accreditation office for the UN and get my badge to be able to participate in the conference.  I am going as an Observer, which will allow me into most of the negotiations, but not all. I will seek out the chief negotiator for Tuvalu who said by email that he would see if I can be helpful to their efforts.

I will connect with the Global Greens, other elected Green Party members of governments from Sweden, Australia, Germany, Kenya, Finland and so on. And I will find the Canadian Youth Delegation – a source of real hope and inspiration. It is always nice to see old friends.  At COP14 in Poznan, I told a reporter it was like “a family reunion on the Titanic. It is nice to see everyone again, but there’s a bad feeling in the air.”

The negotiating dynamic is not promising.  By this point in the process laid out at COP11 in Montreal, we should be confidently at the stage for the second commitment period under Kyoto to enter into force so that there would be a seamless transition from the first phase of Kyoto to the second.  But the train wreck in Copenhagen made that impossible.  Some in the media take me to task for accusing the Canadian government (under the temporary control of the Harper Conservatives) of sabotage.  But I have been watching the sabotage from day 1 of the Stephen Harper era.  He hates Kyoto.  It is almost an allergic reaction.  So he started as PM by repudiating our legally binding targets.  Act one is sabotage.  At every COP since 2006, the Harper-instructed delegation has thwarted progress.  Sometimes the Canadian delegation just sits quietly through the process to build consensus and then when the chair (of whatever sub working group has been beavering away) thinks it has consensus, Canada pipes up with objections.  This is bad faith bargaining, but count it for another five acts of sabotage at COP 12, 13, 14 , 15 and 16.

Further historical acts of sabotage are found in twisting arms of other countries to refuse to negotiate a second commitment period as well.

To that, add the plan to legally withdraw from Kyoto, but not to announce it until after COP17 is over (where presumably Canada’s real agenda is to try to find other governments willing to join us in refusing to take action – thus legitimizing the plan to kill Kyoto). Then to come back to Canada and announce the duplicitous legal withdrawal on December 23rd,  when the House is no longer in session.

To understand what Stephen Harper has been doing, just imagine that our Prime Minister were George W. Bush.  Our PM has taken up the mantle of Bush in opposing global action, but he is much more skilful in obfuscating the fact that that is what he is doing.

I suppose killing Kyoto would be laudable if the Harper government were actually doing what they say they are doing —  trying to get other countries into a globally binding and inclusive agreement replacing Kyoto. But they are not.  No other such agreement exists and on the countdown for action required to avoid global disaster, there is no time to develop such an agreement.  The only other show in town is the laughable two page non-binding Copenhagen Accord.

If the Harper goal were really a binding agreement to reduce emissions that includes China and India and Brazil, we would stay in Kyoto, as it is a process already supported by China and India and Brazil, nations among the 191 that have already ratified Kyoto.

So what do I hope?  I hope against hope that the EU, despite the real distractions of the financial crisis, take real leadership and work with other willing countries, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, Australia (unsure?), developing nations, low lying island states, and start negotiations to ensure we arrest the rise in GHG no later than 2015.  I hope Japan, still committed to meeting its targets under the first phase of Kyoto, will come back on board.  I hope the dysfunctional US government will find a way to make some helpful noises in Durban.  And, I hope and against hope that the Canadian delegation will, based on unprecedented public pressure, do a 180 and accept a second commitment period.

In other words, I hope for a miracle.

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In my last column for 2010, appearing on December 9, I wrote about the inspiring work of Canadian youth, using the example of pressing for climate action. Our young people were out in force in Cancun, Mexico for the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

They wore a powerful message on their T-shirts. It was a quote from Christina Ora, a young woman from the Solomon Islands, at last year’s COP: ‘You have been negotiating all my life. You cannot tell me you need more time.’

Now for the rest of the story.

After last year’s failure in Copenhagen, few held out any hopes for a good result in Cancun. The abuse and lack of trust in Copenhagen—the hijacking of negotiations to back-rooms by Barack Obama, the repeated insults to various delegations, particularly (and inexplicably) China by the host government, the rich country gambit that developing countries would take large amounts of money and look the other way as industrialized countries continue polluting—all led to a deep level of distrust as negotiations opened in Cancun.

By the time I arrived in Cancun on December 4, the atmosphere was gloomy. Initially there were rumours that the Mexican host was also working on a secret text, as Denmark had done last year. Prospects for success were dampened when Canada, Russia and Japan were named as countries unwilling to commit to a second phase of Kyoto. The mood was not optimistic.

At the mid-point in negotiations, Sunday, December 5, the president of the conference, Mexico’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Patricia Espinosa, convened an informal session of the plenary. Espinosa used that Sunday session for what amounted to a group therapy session. She set out how she planned to work over the remaining week, emphasizing repeatedly that she would not hold secret discussions. She explained that she was setting up a number of informal working groups on key issues, with co-chairs selected to pair a developing country with an industrialized country. While she was asking small groups to meet behind closed doors, risking comparisons to Copenhagen, she ensured that any country could join any meeting underway. Her repeated assurances of transparency and inclusiveness led to a remarkably cathartic discussion, with country after country calling for an exorcism of the ‘ghost of Copenhagen.’ That discussion seemed to shift the negotiations to a more constructive approach.

Still, progress was slow and sessions laboured in fragmented discussions, all off to the side. On the afternoon of the last day of the conference there was no sense of the dramatic events that were to unfold.

What we had not understood that: Mexican host Patricia Espinoza and Christiana Figueres, respected Costa Rican diplomat and new head of the United Nations FCCC Secretariat, had decided to try something novel (and risky). As each sub-group made progress, whereever consensus appeared, comprehensive draft language was prepared and distributed—fifty nations were in direct consultation around the emerging, consensual text.

Last Minute Surprise

Finally, in the afternoon of that last day, two texts were released. One dealt with the future for Kyoto, the other with the so-called ‘Long-term Cooperative Action’ (LCA) issues. In total over 30 pages of detailed text. The text had something for everyone. If accepted, everyone would have to give a little ground.

The two draft texts had been distributed and delegations were the mood of the room was clear. Espinoza was greeted by a prolonged, emotional, standing ovation. Work continued through the night, indeed until 6:30 the next morning. But the enthusiasm for the text was shared, nearly universally.

Only Bolivia registered its objections. Canada clearly didn’t like the text, but Canada was not going to block what was a widespread consensus. (I spoke with acting Environment Minister John Baird just as the plenary resumed at 9pm. He told me Canada had lots of problems with the agreement, and if the text was opened up, it would not survive.)

What Was Agreed?

The documents do not by themselves obligate governments to take any new steps to reduce emissions. What they do is build a strong foundation for agreements to be reached at COP17 next year in Durban, South Africa.

The language is strong and unequivocal. In the LCA decision it is stated ‘climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet, and thus requires to be urgently addressed by all Parties.’

The decisions confirm that the science and IPCC advice is compelling. It commits to find ways to avoid allowing global average temperature from increasing by 2oC, but recognizes the need to consider that the high point should be 1.5oC. For the first time in a UN decision, it mandates that all nations should immediately determine the year by which GHG emissions should peak and begin to fall. It states all parties agree ‘that Parties should cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national greenhouse gas emissions as industrialized countries should reduce emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

It deals extensively with the need for adaptation (creating a Cancun Adaptation Framework and Adaptation committee), for financing, it creates a new Green Climate Fund, as well as funding to help arrest deforestation.

What Does It Mean?

It means Kyoto is still alive, but the parties are not committed to a second commitment period when Kyoto’s first period ends in 2012. It just means there could be a second commitment period. Anchoring of voluntary pledges from the Copenhagen Accord may fit into the language of the LCA text, but the Copenhagen Accord targets are laughably weak. Hence, the language calling for industrialized countries to ‘raise the level of ambition’ in their targets.

Somehow in Durban at COP17 we will have to find a way to either continue this two-track process (Kyoto and FCCC) or merge them in one agreement.

What Can Canadians Do?

Once again, our government won the Colossal Fossil Award for being the most obstructive nation in the negotiations. Before Durban, we have to get a change in our government’s position, or get a new government. Canada stepping up to commit to a second commitment period, even on weaker targets, could help shift the balance to saving Kyoto. The bottom line is that we are running out of time. In the next 12 months, we must seize the small ripples of hope that are emanating from Cancun. We must build a public demand for real action to bring the words and framework of the Cancun agreements to life.

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In those days, Canada was in the lead. We had hosted the first international scientific meeting on the threat of climate change. As Senior Policy Advisor to Canada’s Environment Minister, I was privileged to help organize that meeting, held the last week of June, 1988, and called ‘Our Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security.’

The opening sentence of the scientists’ statement from the Toronto conference was memorable: ‘Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war.’

The consensus statement went on to call for an immediate, first step to protect the atmosphere was to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) 20% below 1988 levels by 2005.

For those who really remember their climate trivia, you may recall that target was a commitment in the 1993 election and Chretien’s first ‘Red Book’. Once in power, the Liberals ignored it and we saw emissions rise to 26% above 1990 levels by 2006.

Under Mulroney, we were the first industrialized country to both sign and ratify the UNFCCC, which committed over 180 countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions such that their levels would be stabilized before becoming ‘dangerous.’ That framework treaty led to the Kyoto Protocol, which was sabotaged once George W Bush became president in the US and Stephen Harper became prime minister in Canada.

With the first phase for Kyoto’s reduction targets being 2008-2012, negotiations for a replacement treaty began in Montreal in 2005 (technically called the 11th Conference of the Parties, or COP). That conference launched negotiations for the next phase of actions starting January 1, 2013. At the Montreal meeting, the deadline for a successor agreement was identified as the 15th COP to be held in 2009.

No wonder the world media (with less attention in Canada) is now focused on the likelihood of success in December in Copenhagen. That looming deadline led to the global citizen mobilization on October 24, International Day of Climate Action. For a dose of hope and inspiration, go to www.350.org for photos from the 181 countries around the world that held over 5,200 demonstrations calling for action. There you can find a glorious photo of Salt Spring Islanders with the imaginative snorkel protest (see page 1); as well as photos of thousands on Parliament Hill (where I spoke at the ‘Fill the Hill’ rally); Vancouver; Whitehorse; the pyramids of Giza; jungles of Amazonia; and even underwater shots from the Great Barrier Reef.

Despite the fact that Canada had more October 24 events than any other country, climate action day was largely ignored by the Canadian media. Likewise, the Canadian media fail to report the delay of the Climate Accountability Act, Bill C-311. That bill, first introduced in the last session of Parliament by NDP leader Jack Layton, received strong non-partisan support from the Dion Liberals and the Bloc. Sadly, when re-introduced into the House as C-311, Liberal support eroded.

The bill sets targets for GHG reductions along the lines demanded by science. It would allow Canadians in Copenhagen to tell the world that the majority of Canadians and majority of MPs favoured meaningful cuts to hard targets. Tragically, it was delayed by a Conservative motion supported by the majority of Liberals, including Michael Ignatieff. Full marks, by the way, to Dr Keith Martin, Liberal MP from Esquimalt Juan de Fuca, for voting to get the bill back in the House for a vote before Copenhagen.

The vote to delay the climate bill would have received no media notice if not for a quite spontaneous development on the Monday following the October 24 Day of Action. About 120 young people who had been in Ottawa for the ‘Fill the Hill’ rally attended Question Period that day. I was in my usual spot in the Diplomatic Gallery sitting with Pender Island writer Bill Deverell, directly facing the public gallery where the youth were seated. While the unruly lot in Question Period below us, occupied with far less significant issues, bellowed their typical jabs and hoots of derision, one young man in the gallery stood and shouted out ‘C-311, sign it!’ As he was led out by security, another young person called out for the climate bill to be passed. Ultimately, all the youth were cleared from the gallery.

Environment minister Jim Prentice called it an ‘NDP publicity stunt,’ but there was nothing partisan about those young people. They were expressing what we all should be feeling. They are fighting for their future.

As Copenhagen approaches, the negotiations are deadlocked. The head of the UN negotiations said last week that full success in Copenhagen is now ‘impossible.’

‘It is physically impossible under any scenario to complete every detail of a treaty in Copenhagen,’ said Yvo de Boer, executive director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, ‘but Copenhagen can and must agree to the political essentials that will make a long-term response to climate change clear, possible, realistic and well defined.’

To our collective shame, Canada has been part of the problem, demanding special treatment and expansion of the tar sands. The warnings of the scientific community are clear. GHG levels must stop rising and level off by 2016. They must begin to fall from there. If not, we could well be locking the atmosphere and climate system into a rapid accelerating process called ‘runaway global warming’ in which case nothing we do in 2020 or 2030 can reverse catastrophic trends.

Is it any wonder our children cry out?

Elizabeth E. May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada, candidate in Saanich–Gulf Islands and Officer of the Order of Canada. She will be writing a regular column for Island Tides.

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