Won't repeat Kyoto error: PM
KAMPALA, Uganda – Stephen Harper concluded a Commonwealth summit today by bluntly describing the Kyoto accord as a mistake the world must never repeat.
The Prime Minister characterized the landmark climate change deal as a flawed document and served notice that Canada will not support any new international treaty that carries its fatal flaw.
Harper said the key error of Kyoto was slapping binding targets on three-dozen countries but not the rest, including some of the world's biggest polluters like the United States, China and India.
So Canada will enter key negotiations on a post-Kyoto deal next month with a relatively simple position: all major polluters must be included, or there's no deal.
Harper came under fire from some quarters for promoting that view at the Commonwealth summit but was adamant that the everyone-in approach is the only solution.
Harper's stance places the bar for success extremely high at upcoming United Nations talks in Bali, Indonesia, but he said it's better than the incrementalist approach of the past.
"This was the Kyoto mistake," Harper told a news conference at the summit's conclusion.
"We already did the `One-third of the countries will take binding targets and let's hope the rest fall into line."'
"We're already there. That hasn't worked."
Harper's remarks on Kyoto offer the latest in a series of public stances he has taken on the treaty, which demands six per cent emissions cuts below 1990 levels by 2012.
Five years ago he described it as a money-sucking socialist scheme and ridiculed the science of global warming when the previous Liberal government ratified the treaty.
More recently, he's simply described its targets as unattainable because of the Liberals' well-documented failure to cut emissions, a view that was reflected in his government's policy-setting throne speech.
On Sunday, he suggested Kyoto was flawed all along.
"We already saw Kyoto," he said.
"If we get a third of the world to sign on first and wait for the other two-thirds, it's never going to happen."
Harper says he has helped to achieve something that's never been done before: Getting the United States, China and, now, India, to agree to tackle climate change at successive international summits.
At the G8, at APEC, and now with India at the Commonwealth, he got the world's biggest economies to agree to the general principle of cutting emissions.
Just a few days ago at an Asian summit, India refused to endorse a resolution that called for it to strive toward undefined, so-called "aspirational" goals on greenhouse emissions.
But this week, the Indians and the entire 53-member Commonwealth did sign on to such an agreement.
Harper was a key player in making that happen, and some other countries were furious at Canada as a result.
To procure India's approval, the Commonwealth had to strip out any reference to binding targets in a resolution that had the support of almost any country.
Some foreign diplomats were so disgusted that they sought out Canadian journalists to tell them what their country was doing behind closed doors.
One called the Harper approach a perfect recipe for making sure nothing happens.
Canada was among the only countries to oppose a resolution that had called on developed countries to meet binding targets, without making any reference to developing ones like India.
The other major holdout, Australia's government led by John Howard, was turfed from office in an election during the summit.
Howard's successor, Kevin Rudd, has promised to sign the Kyoto accord immediately upon taking office.
Malaysia's leader expressed disappointment that binding targets were excluded from the final resolution.
"I was hoping that there was something specific we could decide upon – but it was not possible," Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told a news conference. "In some way I do feel a bit disappointed."
He said he hopes developed countries take a lead role, while adding that poorer countries also have a responsibility to act.
Harper says there's no other choice.
China, India, and the United States, none of whom are bound by Kyoto, account for more than half of global emissions alone.
Harper says they must all be brought on side in a global system that includes binding targets for everyone. But then why, he was asked, hadn't he push for binding targets for all Commonwealth members?
His reply spoke straight to the challenge that lies ahead at the UN talks in Bali, and to the point raised by some foreign diplomats who opposed his all-or-nothing approach.
"We would not get consensus here," Harper said.
That has some wondering if Harper feels it's impossible to get 53 Commonwealth members to support a purely symbolic resolution that refers to targets, what hope is there that 200 countries could leave Bali with a deal that binds them to detailed targets?
But the prime minister disputed reports that Canada was isolated at the summit and pointed out that his government helped write the climate change deal that was ultimately adopted.
"For the first time in a very long time Canada's voice is being heard. And the consequence of our voice being heard is we're getting the changes we want to see," he said.
The host of the summit did mention a Canadian prime minister in his closing remarks, but it wasn't Harper.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni concluded his address by quoting former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau's 1973 description of the Commonwealth as a family.
And while Harper spoke, a camera caught Museveni more than once drifting in and out of sleep.
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Canada gets its way on climate change
ALAN FREEMAN
Globe and Mail Update and Canadian Press
November 24, 2007 at 4:34 PM EST
KAMPALA — Commonwealth leaders agreed to a much watered-down agreement on climate change after Prime Minister Stephen Harper resisted any reference to binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions.
The agreement, announced at a news conference Saturday afternoon was a setback for other Commonwealth members, led by Britain, who had called for binding commitments for greenhouse gas reductions in the statement.
But Mr. Harper said that he could not agree to the original proposal which put binding commitments on some large greenhouse-gas emitters and not for others.
“We will not agree to a framework that binds some countries and not others because that is a recipe for failure on the issue of climate change,” he told reporters. “We already have a protocol like that and it doesn't work. We need a protocol that involves everyone.”
Mr. Harper denied that Canada had been isolated during the discussions. “I didn't find that to be the case at all when we discussed this among leaders,” he said without naming who his allies may have been during the discussions.
“Our view is that the first thing that's important we that we get a framework that includes everyone. That is the most important in this declaration as it was at the G8 as it was at APEC, the recognition everybody should be involved.”
Mr. Harper said he still wants a new global climate-change treaty that includes binding targets for every country, and Canada will take that position to critical climate talks in Indonesia next month, where world governments will seek to hammer out a successor agreement to the Kyoto accord.
The comments come during a Commonwealth summit in Uganda.
A diplomat from another Commonwealth country described Canada's position — that there's no deal unless everyone agrees — as a recipe for inertia on climate change.
As for binding emissions targets: “Canada's view is that we need binding targets on all nations. That's going to be the approach we're going to take to international negotiations.”
A British official said his delegation was disappointed it failed to get the word binding into the statement but he insisted the statement remains strong.
The Commonwealth operates by consensus which means that all 53 leaders had to sign up to it.
Canada and Australia had been the lone holdouts against an earlier resolution that would have included such targets — and the Australian government has just been defeated in an election.
The earlier resolution would have committed developed countries to binding targets but not developing countries. Canada argued that the deal was unfair because it excluded India, a Commonwealth member and one of the world's biggest polluters.
The agreement hints at the position Canada will likely take into next month's long-anticipated climate talks in Bali, Indonesia. The Conservative government believes that big polluters who did not sign the Kyoto accord — notably China, India and the U.S. — should be included in the post-Kyoto deal. But Mr. Harper says any targets should be flexible enough to deal with different national circumstances.
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Mike Blanchfield , CanWest News Service
Published: Sunday, November 25, 2007KAMPALA, Uganda - Prime Minister Stephen Harper said suspending Pakistan from the Commonwealth was a tough decision, but hopefully the country would be brought back to the fold.
Harper spoke Sunday for the first time on one of the two main issues that dominated the Commonwealth summit. The organization suspended Pakistan three days earlier for violating its democratic principles by not lifting a state of emergency.
President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency there on Nov. 3, arresting the chief justice, curbing journalists and holding lawyers, rights activists and opposition members.
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper applauds a speech during the Commonwealth Heads of State Meeting (CHOGM) final session and concluding statements in Munyonyo, November 25, 2007.
Harper called it "a difficult decision but one which we have done while emphasizing our desire to help Pakistan back to the path of democracy."
Pakistan accused the Commonwealth of making an "unreasonable and unjustified" suspension and threatened to withdraw from the organization.
Harper lauded his host, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for his hospitality and "steady and thoughtful management" of the three days of talks at a scenic retreat on the shores of Lake Victoria.
Museveni appeared to doze off for several seconds as Harper spoke.
For the most part, Museveni escaped any serious public criticism from his guests over his country's dubious human rights record and the 21-year war that has raged in his country's north displacing more than one million people in squalid camps enslaving tens of thousands of child soldiers.
But Harper said he raised both those concerns in a bilateral meeting with Museveni Sunday. While he did not provide details, he suggested that he did not take a hard line with the leader who has been assailed for rigging elections, intimidating his courts and improperly amending his country's constitution to remove any term limits on how long he can sit as president.
"We're not blind to the problems that exist in this country. That said, if you look at the sweep of history in the recent decades, this country is moving in a positive direction," Harper said.
He called it a balancing act to try to urge further progress without "jeopardizing the progress that's already taken place."
Prior to this three-day summit, Human Rights Watch criticized Uganda for violating democratic freedoms, including intimidating the judiciary.
"Any serious discussion at the Commonwealth summit should recognize that human rights violations are inimical to sustainable development. Commonwealth members need to hold leaders accountable if their abusive human rights policies thwart the development of their own countries," the organization said.
Kizza Besigye, the Ugandan opposition leader who was jailed when he ran against Museveni for the presidency two years ago, led a small protest that was confined to an isolated airstrip on Friday.
"We believe that the Commonwealth as it is functioning today is not in any way or manner capable of dealing with the values for which it was set up," he said. "It is increasingly becoming an irrelevant organization."
Harper admitted that even though the Commonwealth "does put democracy, human rights and good governance at its core," that doesn't mean that all its members are model democracies.
Harper said that the suspension on Pakistan shows that the Commonwealth takes its commitment to human rights seriously.
"The principal value of the Commonwealth: it is the one organization where those values, however imperfectly practiced, sight is not totally lost of them."
Harper flies to neighbouring Tanzania on Monday to meet President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete. Harper is to pay a brief visit to a Ugandan preschool.
Ottawa Citizen
