Back from his first United Nations conference as Canada’s climate change ambassador, Dan McDougall offered reassurance: our international reputation is not in tatters.“We have very good relations with our colleagues and countries around the world. Canada’s positions are respected,” McDougall said Friday. “We’re very active in all of the negotiation sessions and making very positive contributions.”
One year after Canada’s dramatic withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, McDougall said he didn’t experience any hostility at the eighteenth Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-18) in Doha, which he attended alongside Environment Minister Peter Kent. He brushed off the obvious counterexample: the Fossil of the Day awards frequently given to Canada by the Climate Action Network for blocking progress at the negotiations. McDougall described the awards as “extraneous” to the negotiation process.
“It’s a little side show that happens somewhere. Don’t even know where it happens. But in some back room someone decides magically at the end of the day to award these little things.”
McDougall, who has served as Kent’s assistant deputy minister for international affairs since 2011, was handed additional responsibilities as chief negotiator and ambassador for climate change in December. He replaced Guy Saint-Jacques, who was appointed Canada’s ambassador to China after two years in the role.
McDougall comes to the job at a key time, as Canada actively works toward a post-Kyoto international agreement that will establish emissions reductions targets for all major emitters.
It’s a tall order, but McDougall has a lot of experience with international treaties. He started his public service career at Industry Canada, where he worked on such agreements as the Canada-U.S. Auto Pact and the automotive provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“They’re all very different. When you’re dealing with something like NAFTA, which is three countries, it’s a very different environment from when you’re dealing with something like the climate change treaty — we have 197 countries.”
Countries participating at the COP 17 meeting in Durban agreed to negotiate a new treaty covering all major emitters by 2015; the dialogue since then has been positive, McDougall said.
“The tone has been right. Parties, countries are constructively meeting and looking to how we can work together to meet this 2015 agreement timeline that we’ve set out for each other.”
But he acknowledged there’s still a long road ahead: “It takes a little time to get everybody on the same page as to what can be done, and what can be effective.”
McDougall said he takes an “all of the above” approach to international relations.
“Some of it is about personal relationships, some of it is about advancing scientific discussions. A lot of it is very technical. When you’re setting up treaty arrangements and institutions, that’s fairly technical work, so getting the right technical experts engaged on the thing is important.”
McDougall said he stands firmly behind the Conservative government’s position that Kyoto is a dead letter, even though some member countries have signed on to extend the Kyoto agreement until 2020.
“It’s a very small group of countries now who are participating in Kyoto. It represents 14 to 15 per cent of emissions by most estimates. So 85 per cent of the emissions of the world are not being dealt with by Kyoto. That doesn’t mean they’re not being dealt with,” he said, citing the Copenhagen target of reducing emissions by 17 per cent by 2020.
“It’s not Kyoto or nothing.”
In the coming months, McDougall will represent Canada at formal sessions in Bonn and at a smaller session with the 17 major economies.
“It’s a good way to start the dialogue in advance of the formal negotiations and get different ideas and approaches on the table,” McDougall said.
“The process right now is people are putting ideas on the table as to how we might approach (the new treaty), what are some of the principles that might guide it, and then we’ll work off of that … As we progressively work through the negotiations over this year in particular, we’ll get down to some crunchier issues.”
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Sonya Bell
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