Canada joins the discredited Bush-led AAP climate initiative

Further distancing itself from the Kyoto Protocol, Canada has joined the Asia-Pacific Partnership, an organization condemned by critics for its soft approach to the environmental crisis. Canada was welcomed as a member Monday at a ministerial meeting in New Delhi.

Voluntary approach is too weak to stop global warming

Ottawa (16 Oct. 2007) - Further distancing itself from the Kyoto Protocol, Canada has joined the Asia-Pacific Partnership (APP), an organization condemned by critics for its soft approach to the global environmental crisis. Canada was formally welcomed as a member Monday at a ministerial meeting in New Delhi.

The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), one of Canada's largest labour organizations and a member of the Climate Action Network, says the move to join the APP is a cynical ploy by the Harper government to divert attention away from its abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol and its complete lack of effective action to tackle climate change.

“The Asia-Pacific Partnership has no binding targets and no timelines," adds Emilie Moorhouse of the Sierra Club of Canada. “After abandoning its Kyoto targets, the Canadian government is now jumping aboard the APP approach to create the illusion that it takes the issue seriously."

Years of experience demonstrate that voluntary initiatives are far too weak to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with the urgency needed to avoid dangerous climate change. In contrast, the Kyoto Protocol sets legally-binding targets for industrialized countries.

The United States and Australia, two of the leaders of the APP, are the only two industrialized countries that failed to ratify Kyoto.

Nothing like Kyoto

“Asia-Pacific and Kyoto are night and day. If Canada does join on to President Bush's partnership, the government must be clear with Canadians that Kyoto comes first," said Steven Guilbeault of Équiterre. “Anything less would be disastrous." The stated goal of the APP is to promote clean technology, something that the Kyoto Protocol is already doing on a far larger scale. Canada would become the seventh member of the pact, joining the United States, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea.

If used as a complement to Kyoto's mandatory targets, the APP could perhaps play a very limited role in facilitating discussion among its member countries. However, the crucial international climate change discussions take place under the auspices of the United Nations. The next Kyoto negotiation session will be held in Bali this December.

“The APP is being used as a diversion from the reality that Kyoto is being blatantly ignored and rapidly rising emissions are not being reined in," says Julia Langer of the World Wildlife Fund. “Nothing should be allowed to distract, rival or undermine Canada's good-faith participation in the truly multilateral UN process."