Tag: Canada

The future of Annex I forests and their role in climate change mitigation is about to be decided here in Cancun.
ECO has long highlighted how inappropriate and possibly fraudulent LULUCF accounting rules could be used by Annex I Parties to avoid accounting for their forestry emissions. This week a group of NGOs assessed the scale of these impacts, in particular, the magnitude of proposed forest management baselines relative to the ambition of Parties’ pledges. Astonishingly, the emission reduction efforts of some Parties could be reduced by up to 66% as a consequence of unaccounted emissions from logging their forests.
There is still more than one proposal on the table, and it is clear that the impact of forest management accounting on countries’ pledges will differ depending on the approach agreed upon.
A review process was proposed by developing countries earlier this year to evaluate the robustness of favoured baseline proposals by Annex I countries. The new KP Chair’s text calls on Parties to provide the required information by February 2011 and for expert reviewers to conclude their review by May.
But let’s be clear.  The impact of the proposed reference levels is unacceptable and a review won’t fix that. However, broadening the review to include an objective analysis of all accounting options could help Parties make an informed decision about which approach should be used in the second commitment period. To do this, Parties would need to provide information about each of the potential options on the table and how it will impact their pledges.
This analysis is urgently required for a meaningful discussion on numbers. That will achieve two crucial things: the discussion of ‘numbers’ will go forward with consideration of all potential options, and decisions will be made based on the likely real impacts on the climate.

Notes: Figures are percentages of country-specific base years.  Pledged emission reductions for 2020 (rel 1990) from FCCC/KP/AWG/2010/INF.2/Rev.1.  Unaccounted logging emissions equals the difference between Party’s proposed reference levels and average of historical net emissions.  The estimate of average historical net emissions from Annex I forest management calculated using data from 1990-2008 (forest land remaining forest land) from Parties’ 2010 
inventory submissions.  Any adjustments were made on consultation with Parties and technical experts.  Japan has not yet indicated whether its pledges include accounting for forest management.

Let’s say you’re a tar sands loving North American government with a bit of a carbon dependency problem. You need a clever way to get away with doing nothing on climate change, and you notice that your neighbor to the south won’t have an easy time getting a cap-and-trade bill through its Congress.
For Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, the solution surely seemed obvious: announce that you just can’t lift a finger to deal with climate change unless the U.S. moves first. As they say in Canada: problem solved, eh?
Not quite, as it turns out. With the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency moving to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new industrial facilities starting in 2011, Harper’s plan of outsourcing climate policy to the U.S. meant that Canada would have to do the same.  That’s bad news for the tar sands (oil bearing deposits in central Canada), where plans for a massive expansion just don’t line up with pesky limits on their emissions.
Enter John Baird, Canada’s brand new – er, not so new – environment minister. (Veteran observers will remember him as the last minister in Bali to oppose the science-based target range of 25-40% below 1990 in 2020.)
Confronted about lining up with the neighbors to Canada’s south, Baird had some choice words: the US proposal is ‘patchwork’ and ‘very, very preliminary stuff’, covering ‘a small, tiny percentage of new plants’. Yes, that would be in contrast to Canada’s comprehensive proposal of doing nothing whatsoever for any percentage of its new plants.
And this isn’t the first time that Canada’s policy – 100% harmonized, as long as the US doesn’t do anything – has reared its ugly head. Internal emails from the Department of Foreign Affairs released yesterday show Canadian diplomats hard at work to ‘kill’ a 2007 US clean fuels policy. They enlisted allies at Exxon and other oil companies in the battle to, as they so lyrically put it, ‘keep the oil a-flowing’.  And when one official from Environment Canada pointed out that curbing tar sands emissions is a good thing, her comment was dismissed as ‘simply nutty’. Is it a coincidence that this sorry little episode took place the last time John Baird was environment minister?
Anyway, adding it up, it’s clear that Canada’s three-bagger of Fossils from the first day of the Cancun talks is the most appropriate way to welcome John Baird and the government he represents back to the negotiating table.  Oh, Canada – how could you!