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For release: October 12, 2007

Canada set to join discredited Bush-led climate initiative
Asia-Pacific Partnership's voluntary approach too weak
to stop global warming

(Ottawa) Further distancing itself from the Kyoto Protocol, Canada has announced its intention to join the Asia-Pacific Partnership (APP), and is expected to confirm its membership at a ministerial meeting of the APP in New Delhi on Monday, Oct. 15.

“The Asia-Pacific Partnership has no binding targets and no timelines,” said Emilie Moorhouse, Sierra Club of Canada. “After abandoning its Kyoto targets, the Canadian government is now jumping aboard the APP approach to create the illusion that it takes the issue seriously.”

Years of experience demonstrate that voluntary initiatives are far too weak to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with the urgency needed to avoid dangerous climate change. In contrast, the Kyoto Protocol sets legally-binding targets for industrialized countries.

The United States and Australia, two of the leaders of the APP, are the only two industrialized countries that failed to ratify Kyoto.

“Asia-Pacific and Kyoto are night and day. If Canada does join on to President Bush's partnership, the government must be clear with Canadians that Kyoto comes first,” said Dale Marshall, David Suzuki Foundation. “Anything less would be disastrous.”

The stated goal of the APP is to promote clean technology, something that the Kyoto Protocol is already doing on a far larger scale. Canada would become the seventh member of the APP, joining the United States, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea.

If used as a complement to Kyoto's mandatory targets, the APP could perhaps play a limited role in facilitating discussion among its member countries. However, the crucial international climate change discussions take place under the auspices of the United Nations. The next Kyoto negotiation session will be held in Bali this December.

“The APP is being used as a diversion from the reality that Kyoto is being blatantly ignored and rapidly rising emissions are not being reined in,” said Julia Langer, WWF-Canada. “Nothing should be allowed to distract, rival or undermine Canada's good-faith participation in the truly multilateral UN process.”

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