Skepticism of COP29 began even before the negotiations started, with civil society decrying the dissonance of having this international climate gathering hosted by a petrostate for the second consecutive year. Human rights organizations and activists also decried the Armenian ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Azerbaijan government just last year.
Despite the stream of disappointments flowing from these meetings year after year, many experts and advocates have reiterated that the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC — the U.N. body where the COPs are housed) remains a critical forum for climate action — the only place where developing countries and vulnerable populations have a voice. As Canadian civil society, we must use our own voices to defend multilateral climate action. The only way to do this is to hold Canada strictly accountable at the UNFCCC.
There's no sugarcoating it: Canada is one of the greatest villains in these talks, both historically and currently. For all its constructive and helpful rhetoric on climate, we cannot ignore the fact that the Canadian government has shirked its responsibilities and undermined global climate action.
The COP29 outcome requires developed countries to provide a meagre $300 billion in finance to support developing countries and their economies against climate disasters. There has been a years-long push for much of that money to come from grant-based public funds rather than loans or market mechanisms. Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s minister of Environment and Climate Change, has ruled out a large public investment in climate finance, instead unveiling a new “blended finance,” market-based initiative at this year’s COP. For many, this is a poor alternative to true ambition.
In its 30 years of participation in the COP process, Canada’s performance has been bleak, despite a rotating cast of governments representing us at the meetings. Canada pulled out of the world’s first significant climate accord, the Kyoto Protocol, before the end of its first commitment period. Our exit was a significant hack at the knees of the Protocol, and the whole agreement lost its teeth soon after.
Canada has also consistently supported weaker language in COP texts, and insisted on limiting the scope of issues at the COPs, which would siphon off-key issues like adaptation and trade to be discussed in other forums, undermining the legitimacy and strength of the UNFCCC. We’ve relentlessly pushed back against developing countries’ proposals for greater ambition, shifted the agreed-upon goal posts of which countries should pay for historical emissions, and contributed to the “trust deficit" between developed and developing countries.
Perhaps the greatest failure of Canada at these talks is our consistent backing of the U.S. position — one that has been nothing short of debilitating for international climate cooperation. The latest Climate Change Performance Index ranks Canada a bleak 62nd out of 67 countries.
Globally, we’re seen as one of the weakest countries when it comes to climate action.
Many climate advocates may balk at this hard truth. We are an altogether polite bunch, preferring nuanced critique to outright condemnation, and wanting to commend the government’s small steps alongside our calls for more ambition. This approach has proved strategic for many years, but in the wake of several COP failures in a row, it’s time to unite against our true common enemy: climate inaction.
The numbers don’t lie: Most G7 nations decreased their annual emissions since 1990. Canada and the U.S. did not. Though Canada did meet and exceed its commitment toward the previous global finance goal of $100 billion USD — two years late.
At COP29, Canada joined other wealthy industrialized countries in producing a new financial goal so lacking in ambition that it has drawn scathing criticism from virtually every corner of civil society and most developing countries. Climate Action Network Canada called it a “band-aid on a bullet wound.”
Developed countries owe a "climate debt" to the developing world, and have agreed to pay this debt in the form of climate finance and other support. But for 30 years, the wealthiest nations in the world have pushed back on this obligation through denial, delays, procedural trickery, blatant refusal and the undermining of the equity principles that lie at the heart of the U.N. Convention.
The leverage of international contributions to actually bend the climate curve is, in many ways, more powerful than domestic action to reduce emissions at home. It wouldn’t be right to compare the two pillars (domestic and international action), but there's no denying that the vast majority of civil society resources, charity funding and advocacy efforts are focused on domestic solutions. However, climate change knows no borders, and even if we succeed in our domestic targets, our global responsibility would be far from fulfilled.
Recent research outlines the various ways we can pay for our climate debt, including through a progressive wealth tax and other instruments. However, the bottom line is this: we must call on the Canadian government to unequivocally mobilize the public finances required for the global energy transition, in line with our historical responsibility and our obligations to the developing world. This mobilization of finance must also happen in parallel with climate reparations for Indigenous nations in Canada.
In the current political reality, it seems impossible that public funds could ever be committed to international climate action at the scale that’s needed. And of course, a Pierre Poilievre Conservative government would be far weaker on this issue than the current Liberal government, but this is beyond political parties. This shouldn’t stop us, as a civil society, from holding the line, remembering what’s at stake and taking a global view of the climate crisis.
Anjali Appadurai is director of campaigns with the Climate Emergency Unit and the director of the Padma Centre for Climate Justice. The Padma Centre is a hub for diasporic communities across Canada to build power towards climate and economic justice.
This op-ed has been corrected to make it clear that Canada and the U.S. were the only G7 nations to increase their annual GHG emissions between 1990 and 2021.
Comments
Appadurai: "The numbers don’t lie: emissions from G7 countries did not decrease, but actually increased from 1990-2020, the majority of the time period that the UNFCCC has been in effect."
Error alert. Wrong graph.
Unfortunately, Appadurai cites Climate Watch's "Historical GHG Emissions" graph. Of course, every nation's cumulative emissions total has gone up since 1990.
Annual emissions tell a different story. In five of the G7 nations, emissions have fallen since 1990. Canada and the U.S. remain the exceptions. Canada's emissions have gone up the most.
Thanks for this! I was going to make the same point. I don't disagree that Canada's contributions, domestically and internationally, should be criticized - but the author undermines her credibility with such a blatantly incorrect statement.
Appadurai: "Canada has become a world-leading climate villain"
When was it otherwise?
Appadurai: "Many climate advocates may baulk at this hard truth. We are an altogether polite bunch, preferring nuanced critique to outright condemnation, and wanting to commend the government’s small steps alongside our calls for more ambition. This approach has proved strategic for many years, but in the wake of several COP failures in a row, it’s time to unite against our true common enemy: climate inaction."
Climate inaction is not our enemy. Climate inaction is the effect, not the agent. Who are the agents or authors of climate inaction? Who are the beneficiaries of inaction? There is your enemy.
Trudeau's govt declared a climate emergency on Jun. 17, 2019. Just 24 hours later, the Liberals re-approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX).
So much for that.
"the government’s small steps"
Appadurai is far too generous in her estimation.
More like one step forward, two steps back.
Canada's incrementalism, incoherence, backsliding, and policy contradiction amount to a plan to fail.
The fossil-fuel industry "wins" merely by slowing the energy shift down. As 350.org's Bill McKibben puts it, winning slowly is the same as losing.
"Canada's billions in fossil fuel subsidies under mounting scrutiny" (National Observer, June 23 2023)
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Jerry DeMarco criticizes the Liberals' "policy incoherence" on climate.
"[Federal] support for O&G companies reached over $20 billion in 2022.
"…Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Jerry DeMarco called it troubling that his office has repeatedly sounded the alarm about fossil fuel subsidies undermining climate action and yet the subsidies persist. He also called it troubling that the CER only just published net-zero forecasts for Canada's energy future because it means the regulator hadn't seriously considered Canada's international commitments.
"But perhaps most concerning to the environmental watchdog is ongoing 'policy incoherence.' DeMarco had previously used that phrase against the federal government after publishing a series of scathing reports in 2021 that took aim at some of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's major initiatives, including Trans Mountain.
"DeMarco compared the effort to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions to pushing a boulder up a mountain. Pushing the boulder up involves pushing against market forces, market failures, individual actions and other factors that make climate change worse. But the government is also pushing against itself, he said.
"Different departments are 'actually opposing forces in some instances. When you see that sort of thing in Canada, you then say, 'Well, now I understand why Canada is the only G7 country to have higher emissions today than when … all industrial countries came together in 1992 to fight climate change.''
"Since 1990, 'no other G7 country has [had] any increase in emissions,' DeMarco added. 'All of the others have decreased from say two per cent to close to 40 per cent, so we're really an outlier.'
"DeMarco added that cutting fossil fuel subsidies is important not just because they undermine climate action, but because as the climate crisis deepens, 'there's a financial risk associated with doing the wrong thing.
"'So you've got policy incoherence as one issue, and now you have essentially the danger that Canada will be using taxpayers' money to acquire assets that may become either devalued or may become liabilities in the future.'"
"Canada's embarrassing climate record is worst of G7 nations" (National Observer, June 1 2021)
"Liberal government set to miss 2030 emissions targets, says environment commissioner audit" (CBC, Nov 07, 2023)
"The report painted a grim picture of emission reductions in Canada over the past 20 years, saying that the only significant drops in emissions came during the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, which had little to do with emissions reduction policy.
"'Canada is the only G7 country that has not achieved any emissions reductions since 1990,' Jerry DeMarco, commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, told reporters."
The new denialism. Just as delusional as the old kind but more insidious. And far more dangerous.
"The New Climate Denialism: Time for an Intervention" (The Narwhal, 2016)
"For all of [Naomi] Klein's blistering critiques of right-wing conservatives, it's the liberal moderates who elicit in her a particular frustration. Last year, she wrote that the Biden administration had to be 'dragged kicking and screaming into passing the Inflation Reduction Act — flawed as it is.' The I.R.A. is the biggest climate legislation in American history, garnering comparisons to the Green New Deal, but in an email to me, Klein maintained it isn't enough: 'We can't afford to celebrate half measures in an emergency.' This has been a consistent talking point in her work: that incrementalism is not just insufficient but often damaging. In 'Doppelganger,' she declares that the political chaos of the last several years is partly the fault of centrists who sound the alarm about problems like climate change but then fail to act accordingly. 'ONE FORM OF DENIALISM FEEDS THE OTHER,' she writes. 'The outright denialism in the Mirror World is made thinkable by the baseline war on words and meaning in more liberal parts of our culture.'"
"When Your 'Doppelganger' Becomes a Conspiracy Theorist" (NYT, 2023)
The simple answer to 'has Canada become a world-leading climate villain'; the answer is an astounding 'YES'. The facts don't lie and with Pierre "Snake Oil Salesman" Poilievre as PM, it will only get worse.
Canada has become a major climate joke!
Entire careers seem to be built now on detailing the astonominal ways climate efforts and inaction are failing us. Paragraph after paragraph iterating the minutia of failure and hypocrisy hammer us from all directions. Some activists are so desperate they resort to direct action and invading polititical leadership campaigns, as if these actions will ever endear themselves to the wider public and force them to accept this narrow view.
I'm still looking for solutions among the mountains of words repeating over and over all the ways leaders have failed the world.
I concluded not that long ago that I'm looking in the wrong place. Answers and ideas never come from journalists and politicians that have a sharp and refined sense of finding and describing failure, but are loathe to actually locate those little wells of hope and climate progress. In fact, these critics often don't recognize trends when they are presented in non critical or neutral terms.
I wonder what Appadurai would make of the emerging powerful trends of renewables in global finance described in the IEA's latest annual reports? This trend is not concerned at all about the terrible consequenses of putting all one's faith in international gabfests that are so easily manipulated by bad actors and vested opposing interests. What a waste of writing talent and reader's time that is. How naive must they be when, to no one's surprise, events like COP are stolen and reversed as if by invitation? Or the general public really turns off to the incessant negative narratives.
The best place to look for climate progress is in the field of economics, a field rarely walked by progressives who profit from depressing narraratives of failure.
UN COP was utterly discredited years ago, even before the National Observer jetted nearly a dozen journos to Glascow at rhe expense of subscribers, or Naomi Klein continues to fly to multiple book interviews and climate protests all over the globe. Look instead to the counterpoint of the apolitical pure economics of renewables.
There is a reason solar is the cheapest form of energy ever invented, and why it is now a force that is outcompeting fossil fuels at every turn despite all the hot air emanating from well-oiled governments and well meaning activists expressing streams of disappointment about the failure of climate jawbone olympics alike.
Rebuilding societies on renewables and social justice will not be based on negativity, but on the hope that arises from genuine progress on the ground.