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Home > COP-16
|  | COP-16: About the Acronym
The formal name of the United Nations COP-16 meetings is the Sixteenth Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention (COP-16). COP-16 is held concurrently with the Sixth Session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP6 - the meeting of countries, including Canada, that have formally ratified the Kyoto Protocol). |
COP-16
(the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - UNFCCC) took place in
Cancún, Mexico from November 29th to December 11th, 2010.
The Cancún conference,
which was also the venue for the "Sixth Session of the Meeting of the
Parties to the Kyoto Protocol" (CMP6), followed in the wake of the
failure to reach a "post-Kyoto / post-2012" binding agreement at the Copenhagen COP-15 conference
in December 2009. As a result of this failure, the goal of the 2010
Cancún conference was relatively modest - to lay the groundwork for a
binding deal at the 2011 COP-17 conference in Durban, South Africa. (For
news stories from the conference, including commentary on what was
achieved at COP-16 and the resulting Cancun Agreement, click here. The December 2010 text of the Cancún Agreement is available here.)
In
Copenhagen in 2009, Canada played a negative role throughout the talks
and was singled out for international criticism. The Harper government's
strategy was widely perceived as one of blocking efforts towards a
meaningful and binding agreement. Moreover, Canada was the only country
in the world to return from Copenhagen and announce a weakening in its
targets.
In the lead up to Cancún, the Harper government:
- allowed the only major federal programs designed to support renewable energy and home energy retrofits to run out of money.
- allowed
northern icebreakers that were supposed to be used for climate change
science to be rented out to oil companies to help them explore for oil.
- directed
Conservatives in the unelected Senate of Canada to kill the current
parliament's only piece of climate change legislation, despite the fact
that a majority of the elected House of Commons voted in favour of the
bill. For the first time since the 1930s, legislation making its way
through the Senate of Canada was voted down without a period of debate.
- launched a coordinated effort to weaken climate change policies
outside Canada's borders. The Harper government has established an “Oil
Sands Advocacy Strategy” in the Department of Foreign Affairs and
federal officials are systematically trying to kill clean energy and
climate change policies in other countries in order to promote the
interests of oil companies.
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Canada's position going into the conference
(visit here for more in depth information)
Climate change is an urgent problem that requires urgent
solutions. The Cancún climate change talks are a critical step towards reaching
a fair, ambitious and binding deal and Canada is coming to the table basically
empty handed. Prime Minister Harper must stop his government’s reckless
approach to climate change and take real action now.
The climate crisis is real and the impacts are already
happening. Many countries are forging ahead to take action, while others are
sitting on the sidelines watching the impacts worsen and the opportunities for
a clean energy future pass their countries by. In the latter category, Canada is
at the bottom of the barrel.
- This Government is actively trying to kill
climate change and clean energy policy in other countries in order to promote
the tar sands
- This Government used an unelected senate to kill
Canada’s only climate change bill – the Climate Change Accountability Act
- This Government is fuelling the problem by
giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to fossil fuel companies
- Canada is one of the top ten global emitters no
matter how you look at it, and we have no credible plan to meet our own weak
greenhouse gas reduction targets
- This Government has committed money for
adaptation and clean energy development in poorer countries, but it is mostly
in the form of loans to agencies that many countries are not comfortable with.
The money that is in the form of grants was taken directly from the aid budget
- This Government has consistently been called out
as representing one of the worst countries in the world at the UN negotiations,
winning the Fossil of the Year award three years running
- The Government has chosen to re-appoint John
Baird as the Minister of the Environment, who notoriously has chosen not to
take the climate change crisis seriously
- This Government has failed to renew funding to
eco-energy and clean energy incentive programs in Canada in the most recent
budget
The impacts of climate change have never been more clear: forest
fires in BC, flooding in the Maritimes and Prairies, and hundreds of millions
of people affected around the world. If governments act now it is not too late
to avoid the worst.
Prime Minister Harper must stop acting recklessly in the
face of dangerous climate change, and begin to represent Canadian’s interests
by taking real action at home now, and stop trying killing the efforts of other
countries who are trying to do their fare share.
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