Canada joined a powerful new negotiating bloc of countries coordinating a push for a strong, legally binding climate agreement at the Paris COP21 negotiations.

This week Canada joined the High Ambition Coalition of both rich and poor countries after entering into dialogue with the EU to learn more about the initiative, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna’s office told DeSmog Canada.

The Coalition, which the Guardian first reported has been meeting in secret for six months, includes 79 countries from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific as well as the EU and the U.S., which joined the group on Tuesday. News is just breaking that Brazil has also joined the illustrious group.

Within the negotiations the Coalition is calling for a clear long-term temperature goal in the Paris climate treaty, as well as strong review rules and a system for keeping track of how well nations are meeting their climate targets.

Canada’s allegiance to the ambitious group comes at a critical time, as lead negotiators are working around the clock to finalize an agreement that will set the agenda for international climate policy for years, even decades, to come. It’s the final countdown.

"I am encouraged by the continued progress we made overnight,” McKenna said in a statement released to media. “We're seeing good cooperation around the table on many of the issues Canada has pushed for throughout the negotiations; for instance the commitment to ratcheting up our ambition every five years, and to transparency in each country's reporting process. These are crucial to our long-term success.”

McKenna added the draft text negotiators are working to finalize includes both a reference to keeping global temperatures to “well below two degrees Celsius” as well as “pursuing efforts to limit increase to 1.5 degrees.”

On the opening day of the Paris negotiations over 100 countries, including several groups of small island nations, called on negotiators to craft an agreement that would align with new science that indicates a temperature increase of above 1.5 degrees could spell disaster for low lying island nations.

“Canada has advocated for this recognition of the urgency of the threat to small-island states, like the Marshall Islands with whom we now stand as part of the High Ambition Coalition,” McKenna said. “The Coalition brings together developed and developing countries from around the world as we lay the groundwork for a safe climate future.”

McKenna, who is one of 14 international ministers tasked with facilitating the negotiations, added Canada continues to advocate for the inclusion of human and indigenous rights in the agreement.

“We're entering the home stretch now,” she said. “I am hopeful the final days and hours will see all parties with me at the table and working together to conclude this agreement. And that this agreement will become a new pathway to a greener economy and a cleaner planet."

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On Wednesday a group of international ministers and delegations worked through the night refining a fresh draft of the text that will form the world’s first global climate treaty.

Major redline issues around the treaty’s long-term target — whether it limits warming to 1.5 or two degrees Celsius — as well as climate finance, loss and damage and transparency kept negotiators up until 6am Paris time as countries worked towards a level of compromise that will not threaten the world’s most vulnerable countries with catastrophic climate impacts. 

Yet, among the high-level talks, Canada stepped in to raise another crucial issue: the potential exclusion of indigenous rights from the text of the agreement, expected to be agreed Friday.

Catherine McKenna, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, spoke before a plenary hosted by French President Françoise Hollande late Wednesday night to implore international leaders to make reference to human and indigenous rights in the Paris climate agreement stronger and permanent.

“The agreement must recognize adequately the importance of respecting human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples,” McKenna said.

Indigenous Rights Uncertain in Climate Treaty

Last week negotiators placed the only reference in the draft text to such rights within square brackets. This means it is contested and could eventually be removed from the final agreement. Indigenous leaders at the climate talks say they want to see a climate deal that not only acknowledges the unique rights of indigenous peoples but that traditional lands, cultures and practices have been greatly impacted by climate change.

In addition, indigenous groups want to ensure a new low-carbon plan is not used to by governments to justify controversial hydro, wind or other projects.

“We are deeply concerned that the reference to human rights and rights of indigenous peoples…is under brackets,” McKenna said, recommending the reference be “unbracketed as we move forward.”

McKenna further called for human and indigenous rights to appear in the “operational paragraphs” of the text as well as in the agreement’s introduction, where it currently sits. The introduction is not legally binding.

“This is critically important to us,” McKenna said.

Last week indigenous groups observing the negotiations revealed countries including Norway, the United Kingdom and the European Union were working to remove mention of human and indigenous rights from the agreement.

Saudi Arabia and the United States have argued specifically against the inclusion of human rights, saying the language could open up unnecessary liabilities in an agreement that, they argue, is only supposed to be about environment.

These efforts have led observers to suggest the talks are being held up by what some have described as human and indigenous "rights deniers."

At a press briefing hosted by representatives from indigenous communities across the globe, Frank Ettawageshik with the Native American Rights Fund said: “A climate change agreement that does not recognize the rights of indigenous peoples and human rights for all would be a failure.”

“It’s disappointing that we have to fight as hard to get this point across,” he said, adding he believes nations are using indigenous and human rights as a bargaining chip.

“It’s a constant fight for this,” he said. “We’re trying to reinforce those who are enforcing it, and get those people who are standing in the way to at least step aside long enough to let this be a part of the agreement.”

Indigenous Groups Fight for Inclusion in Climate Talks

“Many of our Indigenous peoples still live off the land, living a subsistence-based lifestyle,” Princess Daazhraii Johnson from the Neets’aii Gwich’in in Alaska said this week.

“And given that many of the world’s fossil fuel reserves are on or adjacent to Indigenous lands, we must protect our collective rights to self-determine our relationship to Mother Earth by rejecting false solutions to addressing climate change,” she added.

Johnson, who is also a spokesperson with Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL) Alaska, said it is critical both human rights and, separately, indigenous rights remain within the text.

“The inclusion of the rights of Indigenous Peoples text, in addition to Human Rights text is crucial,” Johnson wrote in a press release. “A Western, non-Indigenous evaluation of Human Rights does not necessarily adequately protect our rights as Indigenous Peoples.”

Crystal Lameman, Treaty Coordinator and member of the Beaver Lake Cree nation in Alberta, said she feels like a discussion over whether or not to include indigenous rights in the climate treaty is retrogressive.

“It’s like being hurtled back 30 years into the past,” she said at the venue of the Paris climate talks.

The Beaver Lake Cree is currently engaged in a major legal challenge against the cumulative impacts of oil extraction in the Alberta oilsands, which has negatively impacted the community’s rights to hunt, gather medicines and fish according to a historic Treaty 6 agreement.

“Right now I’m fighting for the very future of our children, the next seven generations to come.”

“It’s important as indigenous woman that comes from the tar sands,” Lameman said.

“It’s important as an indigenous woman who comes from Treaty 6 where we live in one of the most beautiful places on the planet — the northern boreal forest — where every single thing a human being needs to survive is right there,” she said. “That’s what were here on the ground in Paris to fight for, the very essence of who we are as indigenous peoples.”

Lameman said it has been difficult to stand by while states negotiate her children’s rights.

“Indigenous peoples don’t have a voice [in the negotiations] when we’re the first people to impacted by climate change. The people who are on the frontlines are the first people to feel the effects of climate change and we’re being exclude from those negotiations.”

“That’s like stabbing me in the heart,” she said.

Indigenous Peoples, from Arctic to Small Islands, Affected by Climate

On Wednesday a group of indigenous peoples from both Arctic and island states called on leaders in Paris to keep temperatures from warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Both low-lying islands and Arctic regions are suffering extremely early impacts of melting sea ice and permafrost as well as sea level rise.

“We are deeply concerned about the impacts of climate change on sea ice and our way of life,” Nunavut Premier Peter Taptuna told reporters this week. Taptuna joined the government of Greenland as well as the Inuit Circumpolar Council in a call for a climate agreement that recognizes the disproportionate effects of climate change in the Arctic.

The Inuit Circumpolar Council Chair Okalik Eegeesiak said the agreement should draw from the experience of indigenous peoples who are “most directly impacted by climate change.”

Members of the Indigenous Environmental Network, say the inclusion of indigenous rights in the treaty text is important for ensuring climate solutions don’t negatively affect traditional lands and ways of life.

Large-scale hydro projects, such as the contentious Site C dam in British Columbia, can flood traditional territories, and wind farms can affect the seasonal migration of reindeer which are a critical part of some indigenous cultures in the Arctic.

Ariel Deranger, member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation down river from the Alberta oilsands, said an inclusion of indigenous peoples rights in the agreement may help guide appropriate solutions.

“At the moment the rights of Indigenous Peoples all over the globe are being violated by ‘green climate projects’ — such as hydropower dams — in the name of ‘climate mitigation,’” she said.

“If such violations are happening now, imagine what will come with a legally binding document, where the rights of Indigenous Peoples are not guaranteed.”

Lameman said Canada and Alberta have both clearly stated their intentions to ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a legal document some say supersedes whatever emerges in the climate treaty.

“This is your time to prove it,” Lameman said, addressing Canada’s leaders. “This is your time not to use words but to take action and ensure Canada is one of the loudest voices in those rooms.”

“You have an obligation to ensure it — that those other states are hearing Canada and they’re hearing it on behalf of indigenous peoples of that nation.”

Image: DeSmog Canada/Keri Coles

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This is a guest post by Dale Marshall, national energy program manager with Environmental Defence.

There’s a lot of hope for the U.N. climate change summit starting this week. And Canada can play an important role in helping to ensure the Paris summit’s success. 

The goal of the Paris summit, officially called the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21), is for a global agreement on climate action to be finalized. The world has let so much time pass without taking strong action on climate change that many are hoping the Paris agreement will be the one that finally ensures that climate change does not reach truly dangerous levels.

Expectations are high for the Canadian government. Prime Minister Trudeau has signalled that he wants his government to play a constructive role, and contribute to a strong outcome in Paris. Our new report, Canada’s Role at COP21, shows there are several ways that the Prime Minister can lend momentum to the climate summit, where a strong, progressive, Canadian voice can propel the talks forward.

First, the federal government must signal in very clear ways that this is not just a new government but one that takes climate change seriously. The previous government’s pledge for the Paris summit was the weakest in the G7 and assessed as inadequate by two separate analyses — one by four European think tanks and one by civil society groups. The new Canadian government needs to communicate in concrete terms that it will do much more.

There will be a lot of pressure on the federal government to put a carbon reduction target on the table in Paris. This may be difficult given that the government took office just last month, and that the Prime Minister met with provincial premiers just this week. But the climate change announcement of the Alberta government removes what had been one of the biggest barriers to climate action in Canada. A signal from Canada that our current pledge will be strengthened can give forward momentum to the Paris talks.

Second, the Canadian government needs to commit international climate financing to assist poor developing countries who are facing the ravages of climate change. In Copenhagen in 2009, industrialized countries committed to mobilizing $100 billion per year in climate financing by 2020, an amount that is below the cost of the impacts already being faced by developing countries.

The Canadian government has already announced a climate financing package of $2.65 billion over five years. This is a welcome first step but the $800 million pledged in 2020 falls well short of the $4 billion that would be Canada’s fair share of the funding package in 2020. The Canadian government could make up the difference by supporting innovative forms of financing, such as a tax on bunker fuels used in international aviation and shipping. This is something that the Canadian government can do on its own, without buy-in or agreement from the provinces.

Then there are elements that are being discussed in the international climate talks that the Canadian government can support to improve the final agreement. One is a way for global carbon reduction commitments to be strengthened in the near future. Many hope that the Paris summit will deliver everything that is needed to avoid dangerous climate change, but the gap between what has been pledged and what is needed is wide enough that it is unlikely to be bridged at COP21.

As a result, there is a need for a ratcheting-up mechanism to increase ambition and make sure the Paris agreement does not lock in a long period of low ambition. That’s why commitments in the Paris agreement will need to be reviewed, both individually and collectively, on a regular basis. And the first review needs to happen before 2020. By supporting this, Canada would ensure that the global community increased commitments and action until emission reductions were sufficient to avoid dangerous levels of climate change.

Another important element expected in the Paris agreement is a long-term goal the global community will take on. Various options are on the table including a commitment to decarbonize the global economy by 2050. This would mean replacing all existing fossil fuels with 100 per cent renewable energy and sustainable energy access for all. This would go after the root of the problem of climate change — the burning of fossil fuels.

This goal is technologically possible and it appears to be politically possible. Many countries are supporting this goal in the U.N. negotiations. G7 countries almost agreed to it at their most recent meeting in Germany in June, but the former Canadian government played a spoiler role. In this and other ways, the current government can reverse course and support a strong Paris outcome that reflects the science of climate change.

At COP21 in Paris, it won’t be enough for Canada to be a different government. It has to be a different kind of government, one that embraces the important role it can play in the fight against climate change.

Image: Twitter

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