Thank you.
Good morning.
Thank you for inviting me.
My statement will be in English, but I will be happy to answer any questions in French.
My name is Clare Demerse. I'm the associate director of the climate change program at the Pembina Institute.
For those who don't know Pembina, we're a national sustainable-energy think tank that was founded in Alberta 25 years ago. We've been following climate change at the G-8 summit for several years. I attended the last two summits as an observer.
I'm here today to talk about the role of climate change at Canada's G-8 summit in June. In a nutshell, we believe this summit is an opportunity to make progress on this critical and urgent issue that is far too important to waste.
To be clear, we don't see the G-8 or the G-20 as the home for the next global climate agreement. We believe the UN is the right place for that, because at the UN, it includes the countries most at risk for the impacts of climate change, as well as the biggest polluters. But the G-8 and the G-20 summits can give momentum to the global negotiations, and momentum is desperately needed following the disappointing outcome of the UN meetings in Copenhagen last December.
To provide a little context, I think that it's sometimes possible in Canada to lose sight of the priority that other countries give to climate change in their international diplomacy. As we saw in Copenhagen, tackling global warming is a top-tier foreign policy concern for leaders around the world. I think it's safe to say that if the first G-8 summit after Copenhagen was being hosted by the U.S., the EU, or Japan, climate or energy policy would play a very prominent role.
In particular, the EU's national leaders have clearly stated that climate change must be on the agenda of all key international summits, including the G-20. This week the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, stated that the EU would like to see climate change discussed at the G-8 and G-20 meetings in June, both for environmental and economic reasons. Barroso stated that “the transition to a lower carbon economy is an important element of the economic strategy” for the EU.
Many of Canada's G-20 peers take the “race for clean energy” job very seriously. One quick illustration of that comes from a 2009 report from the HSBC Bank, which is entitled A Climate for Recovery. It found that the 2010 G-8 co-host, South Korea, devoted 80% of its total economic stimulus funding in 2009 to green initiatives. Canada devoted ten times less. They found that 8% of our 2009 stimulus funding went to green initiatives.
Our organization did a similar type of analysis, but we were looking at Canada versus the United States. To use this year's numbers, we found that President Obama's 2010 budget request contained 18 times more new funding per capita for renewable power than Canada's 2010 federal budget.
When Prime Minister Harper laid out his agendas for the G-8 and G-20 in a speech in Davos, in January, only one sentence pertained to climate change. The speech classified climate policy as a non-economic matter that had no place on the G-20 economic agenda.
The Prime Minister did place climate change on the G-8 agenda, but it's difficult so far to find much evidence that it's been included in the preparatory work that's been done to date in preparation for the summit. In fact, in a break with tradition, the Government of Canada has not yet convened a meeting of G-8 environmental ministers in advance of the Muskoka summit.
In looking at the recent history of the G-8, we have seen important initiatives come from that group of countries. In Italy last year, G-8 leaders agreed to an aggregate goal of reducing their own emissions by 80% or more by 2050. In Pittsburgh last September, G-20 leaders agreed to phase-out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies over the medium term.
Turning to this year, we believe the most urgent priority, as Robert mentioned, is financial support for developing countries as they reduce their own emissions and adapt to the consequences of climate change. Finding ways to provide this financing is critical to building trust at the global climate talks. It's an obligation that developed countries accepted nearly two decades ago when they negotiated the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Financing like this is needed, for example, to cover the extra cost of building new clean-power facilities rather than a dirty alternative, or to provide funds for malaria, drugs, and bed nets in new regions as the disease spreads. There have been a lot of estimates made of the amount of funding that would be needed for these priorities, and we find with all of them that we're looking at tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars a year over the medium term.
The funds are also needed urgently, as Robert mentioned. This is a here-and-now reality for people around the world. The 2009 report from Kofi Annan's Global Humanitarian Forum estimated that, on average, climate change may already be responsible for the deaths of 300,000 people per year. The fundamental injustice of climate change is that it's the world's poorest people, those who have done the least to cause climate change, who are being hit first and hardest by its consequences. As the nations most responsible for historical greenhouse gas emissions and with the greatest financial capacity to help, G-8 countries must lead in tackling climate change.
In Copenhagen in December, developed countries agreed to provide up to $30 billion U.S., from 2010 to 2012, in new and additional financing to developing countries, and also to jointly mobilize $100 billion U.S. annually by 2020 from a variety of sources. Most developed countries have already made initial pledges of climate financing, but in Canada this summer developed country leaders must deliver on those financing pledges. They must state explicitly that the dollars they provide will be over and above official development assistance.
As Robert alluded to, climate change has not made tackling poverty any easier or any less important. The climate financing that is taken from Canada's existing aid budget will result in reduced resources for poverty reduction. That's not an acceptable outcome. The best way to ensure that climate financing is additional to ODA is to tap into new and innovative sources of funding. Fraser will discuss some of those later on. I believe that G-20 countries can, and should, explore those options this summer.
The government's Speech from the Throne, in March, acknowledged the need to provide international climate financing. Despite that commitment, Canada remains the only developed country in the G-8 that has failed to announce any short-term climate financing. I believe this needs to change before our country welcomes world leaders to Muskoka.
Our organization's analysis is that Canada is responsible for at least three to four percent of the global total of climate financing required. In that short-term funding identified in Copenhagen, that would mean at least $300 million to $400 million per year from 2010 to 2012.
I would also suggest that this committee could make an important contribution by studying climate financing in more depth over the coming months in order to provide recommendations to the government about how best to raise, manage, and disperse Canada's fair share of climate financing.
Before concluding, let me note quickly the importance of following up on a key commitment from the Pittsburgh G-20 summit, which is to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. The G-20 energy and finance ministers were mandated to “develop implementation strategies and timeframes, and report back to leaders” at this June's Toronto summit.
In Canada alone, current federal tax advantages for oil and gas companies are likely in the order of $2 billion a year. Phasing out those subsidies will provide an ideal source of revenue for climate action in developing countries. Despite the federal government's emphasis on the theme of accountability for the G-8 and G-20 summits, it has not yet stated a timeline for phasing out our own fossil fuel subsidies.
Many of the points that I raised are covered in more detail in a backgrounder I have provided to the committee clerk. I apologize for not getting it in time to have it translated, but it will come around shortly.
Thank you so much.