Story by By Nia Williams • Yesterday
(Reuters) -Canada is failing to track the impact of specific government climate regulations on carbon emissions and is unlikely to meet a commitment to plant 2 billion trees by 2031, reports from the country's official environment watchdog said on Thursday.
By 2030, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government aims to cut emissions 42-45% below 2005 levels. Canada's national greenhouse gas inventory report, released last week, showed the country managed an 8.4% cut in 2021.
But the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Jerry DeMarco, presented five performance audit reports that criticised many aspects of Canada's climate and biodiversity policies.
"When I look at all of the...reports that have flagged these grave concerns over the years, it's clear that we have been repeatedly ringing the alarm bells. Now, these bells are almost deafening," DeMarco told a news conference in Ottawa.
DeMarco said Canada's failure to track how specific policies impact emissions means the federal government does not know whether it is using the right tools to meet its climate targets.
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He also warned Natural Resources Canada fell well short of the goal of planting 60 million trees in 2022, which put in jeopardy its 2 billion trees by 2031 goal.
DeMarco said while it was still possible for the government to get back on track meet its 2031 target with "significant changes", the carbon sequestered by the trees would be less than forecast.
"They will not be able to meet their target for carbon sequestration by 2030, which means they have to find real reductions elsewhere, whether it's oil and gas, transportation or something else, to reach their 40 to 45% (emissions cut) target by 2030," DeMarco said.
In a statement, Canada's Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said the government would "double down" on tree-planting efforts and implement many of the commissioner's recommendations.
Canada's Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault said the government would refine its reporting of carbon emissions.
"We won't stop fighting climate change while we figure it out reporting methodologies," Guilbeault told reporters in Ottawa. "The bottom line is that Canada is bending the emission curve downward."
(Reporting by Nia Williams in British Columbia; editing by Diane Craft and David Gregorio)
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