Turning A Blind Eye - O Canada!

Canada has done virtually nothing in the past 15 years and all ecological indicators have declined, said David Runnalls, president of the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Winnipeg, Canada, and who has a 30-year history with various governmental and non-governmental institutions around the world, including UNEP and the World Conservation Union. "Sustainable development is alive and well and working in Europe but not in North America," Runnalls told IPS at a recent conference tracking Canada's sustainable development efforts since 1987. Europeans made sustainable development part of their laws and regulations; Canada did not. Instead, governments slashed budgets in environmental departments and corporate leadership stopped being interested in sustainability, he said. "You couldn't get 15 minutes with a senior environmental official to talk about sustainable development in Canada," said Johanne Gelinas, former commissioner of the environment and sustainable development for the Canadian government. "Sustainable development has never been a priority in the federal government, no matter which party was in power," she said. ... "If large institutions like Canada's banking sector decided to only buy paper from Forest Stewardship Council suppliers (which have been certified for sustainable practices), it would have a huge impact," Gelinas said. Governments are the last place to look for leadership, say former government ministers. "Ninety-five percent of government effort is to keep everything going as usual," said Tim Sale, former health minister in the province of Manitoba. "Governments only act when they perceive there is a serious emergency. Climate change is not seen as an emergency," Sale said. The public also doesn't understand issues like climate change, he said. "Before the Kyoto Protocol went into force, we knew we weren't going to try to meet our international obligations," confessed David Anderson, Canada's minister of the environment from 1999 to 2005. Under that international agreement, Canada had promised to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by six percent from its 1990 levels by the 2008-2012 period. Its emissions are now 34.5 percent above 1990 levels. There was simply too much pressure from the oil sector, heavy industry, the oil-rich province of Alberta and the U.S. government, Anderson said. "The media didn't support us and the United States wanted us to fail," Anderson said. ... That said, the only way forward on sustainability in Canada is going to be from the bottom up, experts agree. The public, professional and non-professional associations and NGOs have to apply pressure on governments to act and restructure our society so that it can be sustainable, said James Meadowcroft, a political scientist at Carleton University. In Britain, elites at all levels -- pop stars, TV personalities, sports heroes, entrepreneurs, scientists, etc -- are all championing action on climate change he said. "In Canada, we just need to get started. To do one thing well that shows we're on the right path and get some positive feedback and generate some momentum to tackle this big, complex problem of sustainability," Meadowcroft said. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40074

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