Canadian Kyoto Withdrawal: CO2 Cuts Must Continue

Canada must continue to impose deep Carbon Dioxide emissions cuts in line with United Nations policy, UN officials have said, despite the country having just withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol.

Canada's move - announced on 12 December - came as a shock, especially in light of the Kyoto Protocol extension announced hours earlier at the UN's Climate Change Conference in Durban.

"I regret that Canada has announced it will withdraw and am surprised over its timing", the UNFCCC's Executive Secretary, Christiana Figueres, today said. "Whether or not Canada is a party to the Kyoto Protocol, it has a legal obligation under the [UN's Framework on Climate Change] convention to reduce its emissions, and a moral obligation to itself and future generations to lead in the global effort."

Canadian Kyoto Withdrawal

The Canadian Kyoto Protocol withdrawal has been widely condemned. In conversation with Chinese news agency Xinhua, a representation for the UK's Department for Energy and Climate Change described it as a "deeply regrettable" decision.

Highlighting the financial savings attached to implementing emissions-reducing technologies, as opposed to "the cost of inaction", he added: "That's why the other Kyoto Protocol parties such as Norway, Australia, New Zealand and the EU have been investing in a green and sustainable future."

Charitable organisations, too, have criticised the move. ‘The Harper government has imposed a death sentence on many of the world's most vulnerable populations by pulling out of Kyoto', Greenpeace spokesperson Mike Hudema stated in a letter sent directly to the Prime Minister of Canada.

"Canada's exit from the Kyoto Protocol, the one existing agreement that legally binds some countries to emission cuts targets, is an affront to the nearly one billion people who struggle every day to feed their families in the face of increasingly frequent and severe droughts, floods, heat waves and storms", Oxfam's Tim Gore asserted, adding: "It is a real shame that a country with such strong record on many development issues would seek to undermine global action on climate change."

Canadian CO2 Cuts

The terms of the Kyoto Protocol had obliged Canadian CO2 cuts to reach a figure below benchmark 1990 levels.

The culmination of the 2011 Climate Change Conference saw over 190 nations pledge to extend the Kyoto Protocol - established in 1997 and due to end in 2012 - for a minimum of five more years. They also established the foundations of a new emissions reductions strategy, named the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, which will take effect from 2020 onwards.