Playing China's Environmental Challenges Game

"It is, above all, a political institution and its purpose is to bring in money and legitimacy to China's often feeble attempts at combating local pollution and climate change overall."

"By making foreigners and foreign organizations invest in this political venture, they effectively silence them."

Czech sinologist Filip Jirous

"As the world faces the interrelated crises of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss -- threats that cross all borders and require urgent international co-operation -- CCCED [China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development] has been a been a meaningful forum for global sustainable development."

International Institute for Sustainable Development

 

"Existential global environmental challenges cannot be effectively addressed without China's contribution, given its size, population and carbon-intensive economy."

Samuel Lafontaine, spokesman, Environment Canada

"Canada's funding is, I believe, a rather pathetic way of keeping our foot in the door in Beijing."

"Unfortunately, it also helps sustain the fiction that China is somehow unable to act in its own self-interest, much less in ours."

David Mulroney, Canadian ambassador to Beijing, 2009- 2012

Cars move along a highway in a coal-producing region in Yulin in northwestern China's Shaanxi province on April 24, 2023. (Ng Han Guan/AP)

 

Canada's Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault is on a visit to China to attend a climate conference. Diplomacy between China and Canada is at its lowest ebb in recent memory. China, taking fierce umbrage at Canada taking a Huawei executive (daughter of its founder) into custody on an extradition warrant issued by the United States, took its own steps by immediately imprisoning two Canadians and charging them with espionage in a revenge hostage-taking. They were imprisoned for almost two years before the U.S. dropped its charges against Meng Wanzhou and Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavrig were released and returned to Canada.

 

A Canadian think tank actually dating from the time of the arrest of the two Michaels, has been acting as the international secretariat for a Chinese environmental agency whose head is a powerful Communist Party leader. Canadian-led projects for the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) under Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development manages international donations and appoints advisers, government having taken over the secretariat from Simon Fraser University.

 

The project is spearheaded by the Canadian government, providing funding equal to China's own. Its supporters claim that it is vital to engage with the advisory organization since China is recognized as key to combating climate change, given it is the world's highest source of carbon emissions. Chair of the Chinese group is China's vice premier, Ding Xuexiang, a member of the Politburo standing committee and formerly director of the office of President Xi Jinping. And Canada's Guilbeault is executive vice chair of the council.

"Even before the meeting starts, they're giving us our marching orders."

"Don't push the envelope. Don't push China to do more. And frankly, the minister [Guilbeault] himself said he was going to have an open and frank conversation. Good for him."

"That makes for a potentially constructive discussion with them."

"They're holding out that carrot that if you're sufficiently deferential and polite, and if you say everything we want you to say, and don't challenge us on climate change and the environment, then maybe, just maybe, other elements of the Canada-China relationship will be improved."

"That's just another way of putting us down, so that we are on our back foot at the beginning of the meeting [China's Global Times reporting that Canada's unusually intense wildfire season 'has resulted in significant excess carbon emissions'.]"

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, board member, China Strategic Risks Institute

The CCICED focuses on green issues but is the leading organization in the campaign by China to co-opt environmentalists globally, according to sinologist Filip Jirous, who reported to the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, detailing that some of its top officials have backgrounds in agencies involved in globally projecting China's influence. Environmentalists from the West who work with Chinese groups avoid criticism of China, which doesn't take kindly to critical observations.

With the distinction of being the world's largest generator of carbon dioxide emissions (the United States second) and Canada 11th, Beijing, though having invested heavily in renewable energy and electric vehicles, continues to build new coal-fired generating plants, the largest emitter of pollution worldwide. In fact, Canada's largest export in raw materials to China is coal. 

Even as Chinese propaganda is heralding the significance of Canada's environment minister's trip, warnings abound that Guilbeault not take a "condescending tone with his Chinese counterparts". Recent revelations of Beijing's interference in Canadian elections saw Canada expel Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei after it was revealed he was involved in intimidating a Conservative Member of Canadian Parliament. China responded by expelling a Canadian diplomat.

Interviewed by CBC News before his departure to China, Guilbeault refused to commit to raising the matters of election interference and Chinese human rights abuses. "We will confront them when we have to confront them. But we will also co-operate on issues like climate change and nature", he stated.

 

Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault speaks at the opening of the Seventh Global Environment Facility Assembly in Vancouver on Aug. 23, 2023. (Ethan Cairns/Canadian Press)

"We cannot solve the climate crisis without international co-operation -- which means continuing engagement, even when tensions are high."

"CCICED has played an important role in fostering this diplomatic dialogue with China over the years."

Caroline Brouillette, Climate Action Network Canada