Kyoto

Having bundled up in a futile attempt to avoid the wind, I am still disentangling myself when a colleague greets me with a barrage of questions, “did you see the news this morning? How can they do that? What does an international treaty mean anyway?” I have barely managed to divest myself of hat and scarf when a fellow Canadian walks past, “ah, great news from home, eh?” he asks sarcastically. I finally make it up the stairs and turn on my computer. My first email is from an American colleague, “did you see this” she writes, “Canada has pulled out of Kyoto”.

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We are milling about waiting for a bus and Ushama, a Nigerian woman also staying at the university residence, has just described the NGO she has set up to address climate change impacts in her community. She is trying to understand why countries like Canada and the United States are refusing to do anything, “How can they not see this”, she asks. “We are already facing the impacts of climate change. This isn’t tomorrow, it’s today. How can they not see what they are doing to us?” The bus arrives and she starts walking towards it. Before she gets in she pauses and turns to me, “We must have faith”, she says, “we must have faith that eventually they will see us.”

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I feel like the only person in the UK unsurprised by Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol. Facing unrelenting growth in emissions fuelled by massive expansions of the fossil fuel industry and heavy transportation, Canada publicly declared that it was abandoning its Kyoto targets four years ago. Canada’s Kyoto target was 6% below 1990 levels. Its current emissions are roughly 30% higher than its 1990 levels. In the absence of any consolidated federal policy, the only way Canada could become compliant with Kyoto would be to purchase emission reduction credits, politically and economically an impossible feat for the federal government.

While debriefing about Durban over a cup of tea an extremely knowledgeable European colleague asks me in complete befuddlement, “but doesn’t Canada have any idea what this is doing to its reputation?” The issue that seems most shocking to many people, especially those in Africa and Europe, is not that Canada did not meet its Kyoto target, but that it is pulling out of an international legally binding treaty. It is turning its back on the global community.

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I am sitting on the floor, leaning against the temporary wall at the back of the Baobob plenary room. At first the security guards didn’t let people do this, but already, at the end of only the second day, they are resigned. There are too many people taking notes, tweeting, and typing on their laptops to chase away, and not enough official observer seats to lure them off the floor. One enterprising young man has figured out where to lift the carpet to find a plug for his laptop.

Gambia has the floor on behalf of all Least Developed Countries. They are making a desperate plea for the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol. They have taken up the rallying cry for the Africa group, “The Kyoto Protocol must not be buried on African soil”. These countries need the funds the Clean Development Mechanism provides. They need the adaptation money that institutions like the Green Climate Fund promise. They need a global stage on which to openly discuss their relationship with climate change, including climate impacts. The Kyoto Protocol is more than a piece of paper from this perspective – it is a formalization of a global community based on recognition of obligations stemming from industrial development and fossil fuel use that cross national boundaries.

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Canada, of course, is not the only country to have turned its back on Kyoto. The US signed Kyoto, but the senate refused to ratify it because of fears about American competitiveness. The long-standing Canadian federal government position has been that it will not move “unilaterally” on climate change in the absence of comparable American efforts, regardless of the efforts being undertaken by other countries. This position is understandable. The US is Canada’s largest trading partner and the two share many industries. Just as fear stopped the US from signing Kyoto, fear has prevented Canada from taking any action on climate change. By declaring any actions taken without the US “unilateral”, Canada renders the rest of the globe, and actions that are being taken in many places, invisible. Canada and the United States are like a pair of teenagers, so engrossed in each other they are completely blind to what is going on around them.

I don’t have the heart to tell this to Ushama, but no Canada does not see her. She is invisible. Her people are invisible. Because from Canada’s perspective, there is no such thing as a global community, there is only America.