This is one of the 26 segments of Guy Dauncey’s Climate Emergency: A 26-Week Transition Program for Canada. Excerpted by permission, and this text has been adapted to reflect the delay in the 2020 United Nations climate conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unless every nation pulls its weight, global emissions will continue to rise and the climate emergency will cause an ever more disastrous future. To this end:
- We will apply a climate and ecological emergency lens to all Canadian diplomacy with other countries.
- We will work with other nations to establish a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- We will pursue our commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
- We will continue to increase Canada’s international development assistance every year to 2030.
- We will join the High Ambition Group of Nations committed to urgent action to tackle the climate and ecological emergencies. We will convene a meeting in Montreal, inviting leaders of Bhutan, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and other countries that have made legally binding pledges to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier.
- At COP 26 in Glasgow we will bring our new Nationally Determined Contribution of a 65% reduction in climate pollution by 2030 and 100% by 2040.
- We will increase our contribution to the UN Green Climate Fund to $4 billion a year. In 2010, the world’s wealthiest nations agreed to mobilize US $100 billion per year by 2020 from a variety of sources to address the pressing mitigation and adaptation needs of developing countries, and that a share of the funding should be channeled through the Green Climate Fund. By 2019 only US $9.78 billion had been pledged, with the UK, France, Germany, Japan and Sweden showing up as the top contributors. Canada contributed $300 million to the Green Climate Fund’s initial period (2015-2018), and has given $288 million in other commitments. Cost: $4 billion a year (#51)
