(An ode to Minister Beverley Oda on the issue of Official Development Assistance)
The G8 International Development Ministers’ meeting in Halifax, Canada happened this week with little talk of climate change. The issue of climate change is set to be on the G8 agenda, yet no ministers’ meetings to date have raised the issue. This ministerial was the last of a series of meetings leading up to the G8 Summit in Muskoka this June.
Germany’s representative Dirk Niebel, Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, was the first to bring up climate change in a general context, as he noted that Development Ministers had a responsibility to include climate change in their planning and projects.
WWF (World Wildlife Fund) put out a statement with clear criteria expectations: “G8 International Development Ministers play a key role in ensuring climate financing are in fact new and additional to Official Development Assistance, and that they are not just robbing Peter to pay Paul. They should establish clear criteria and standards for ensuring that funds are additional,” said Mark Lutes, Finance Policy Coordinator at WWF International.
ItsGettingHotInHere.org’s question to Canada, as host of the meeting (and because the German delegate had left the room), “Minister Oda, the representative from Germany was the first to mention climate change. Will Canada’s current Official Development Assistance and Millennium Development Goal budgets be used to meet Canada’s 2010 to 2012 climate change financing commitments?“
Beverley Oda, Minister of International Cooperation, responded, “(…It’s been a long two days.) Yes, to some extent. I think the thing is, is that we have to look at the direction and the intent of our climate change initiatives and our support for climate change, and working to do that. As you know, climate change is very important. However, we want to make sure that any dollars that we use for our international systems resources are actually going to work to help the countries and to help the people who are living in poverty. This will tie in with our economic growth thematic focus, as well as our food security – the work that we’re doing in agriculture – our corporate social responsibilities, and making sure that the benefits of any industrial activity in a country will benefit the [environment] and will be managed in environmentally responsible [ways].”
Although climate change and environment are allegedly on the G8 agenda*, Canada is only the second G8 host country since 1992 that has decided not to host an Environment Ministers’ Meeting. The other time was in 2004 when the US was the G8 host at the time of President George W. Bush.
* 1. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in June 2009: ““tremendous opportunity to make progress in three areas: open markets and free trade; freedom, democracy and the rule of law; and insist on truly global action against global warming.” 2. Prime Minsiter Stephen Harper noted “climate change” as being on the G8 agenda during his speech in Davos at the World Economic Forum. 3. Canada’s G8 Summit website cites “environment” as a seondary issue on its list of summit priorities.
