Why Canada is reaching for its wallet — again — at COP15 biodiversity summit

Canada opened its wallet again at the United Nations nature summit in Montreal on Friday amid tensions over who should bear the financial burden of a plan to save the planet’s vanishing biodiversity, a conflict that threatens to derail the once-in-a-decade talks.

The meeting, COP15, has been billed as a “Paris moment” for nature — a reference to the landmark 2015 climate-change pact. Canada is among a coalition of 116 countries that have committed to ambitious targets in a potential deal, including protecting 30 per cent of the planet by 2030.

But in a reverberation of a conflict that has dogged climate talks for years, developing countries, where most of the world’s intact nature remains, say richer countries should pay more for their higher burden of protecting nature — a key point of tension that prompted Brazil to lead a late-night walkout that stalled negotiations earlier this week.

Steven Guilbeault, a former Greenpeace climate activist now representing Canada as the Liberal government’s environment minister, was tapped this week as one of two “co-facilitators” to help resolve conflicts over an international framework to protect nature, including the tug of war between high ambitions and a high price tag.

In an effort to push for a resolution, Guilbeault and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly announced Friday that Canada would pony up another $255 million in new funding for nature conservation in developing countries. That’s on top of $350 million that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged in the early days of the summit to help poorer nations with conservation efforts.

On Friday, Guilbeault stressed that Canada and other developed countries have heard the appeals for support, and that rallying money will be important to ensuring a final deal out of the summit has ambitious conservation targets.

“We are calling on all countries to unite around the 30 by 30 initiative,” Guilbeault said earlier alongside other leaders of the “high ambition coalition” at COP15 on Friday.

“Canada knows that can’t happen without sufficient resources in every country in the world, as we have heard loud and clear the need for support,” he said.

With calls to fill a financing shortfall for global conservation estimated at $700 billion per year, Guilbeault also expressed hope that the conference could result in a commitment to rally funding similar to pledges from the United Nations’ summits on climate change.

At the UN conference on climate change in Sharm El Sheikh last month, nations agreed to a historic “loss and damage fund” that developed nations, which emit the most, will contribute to compensate developing nations, where most harms occur.

Guilbeault said he did not see why the Montreal summit could not produce “something quite similar” for nature conservation. But other experts have said a new fund would be a tall order.

Environmentalists welcomed the new funding, with the Climate Action Network’s Eddy Pérez stating in a release that the pledge is a “strong demonstration of solidarity and a strategic move that cranks up the pressure on countries blocking progress on the finance discussions.”

The conference is now entering the final days of talks, with crucial details on financing and how to structure a global deal on nature conservation still in the works.

On Thursday, Guilbeault was tapped along with Egypt’s environment minister with resolving issues at the core of the global agreement, including the “30 by 30” goal. As the host country but not the official leader — China holds the presidency for this meeting, but could not host because of COVID-19 concerns — Canada has taken a prominent role at the conference.

The new funding Canada pledged Friday is spread out over the next six years, and increases to $1.6 billion the country’s overall commitment to helping developing nations conserve nature in the coming years, according to the government.

That tally includes around $1 billion from an existing promise to fund “nature-based climate solutions” in poorer countries.

Estimates for how much financing is needed to protect the world’s biodiversity differ, but a commonly cited figure is that a further $700 billion is needed annually. Environment experts say that nature is massively underfunded compared to efforts to fight climate change, even though the two crises are intertwined: the world’s forests are storing billions of tonnes of carbon, for example.

Even so, some environmental activists attending the summit have praised Canada’s efforts to rally money for conservation and set an example at home. On Thursday, for instance, Guilbeault signalled the federal government would introduce legislation to enshrine its conservation targets — 30 per cent of Canada’s land and waters by 2030 — in law. The move drew kudos from organizations such as West Coast Environmental Law, Ecojustice and Greenpeace.

Others have praised the government’s pledge to spend $800 million to four massive conservation areas that will be managed by Indigenous Peoples in Ontario, British Columbia, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

The commitments to protect more land and water, however, could run up against promises to develop more resources. In its new “critical minerals strategy,” for instance, the government says it will strive to make Canada a premier supplier of minerals used in green technology such as electric vehicles, a pledge that sparked enthusiasm from industry groups such as the Mining Association of Canada.

But Guilbeault has also stated that the government’s conservation and reconciliation priorities could mean some of those minerals stay in the ground.

“It might mean that we decide to not go after certain deposits because they are in very biologically sensitive areas, critical habitats for caribous, for example. Or we won’t go after that other deposit because it’s in a very culturally sensitive area for Indigenous peoples,” Guilbeault said during an interview on CBC radio on Friday.

“It means that we make decisions looking at things other just the money, and just the economic value.”

SHARE: