Peace Brigades International-Canada believes that human rights defenders should have been included at the Finance in Common Summit (November 9-12) and that a presentation by FinDev Canada on gender equality at the summit could have benefitted from the participation of women human rights defenders.

On November 11, The Guardian reported: “The world’s publicly financed development banks have pledged to tie together their efforts to rescue the global economy from the Covid-19 crisis and the climate emergency [but] stopped short of pledging an end to fossil fuel finance in a declaration signed on Thursday by 450 development banks worldwide.”

The Government of Canada’s export credit agency, Export Development Canada (EDC), provides on average nearly $14 billion a year to oil and gas companies.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of EDC financing has gone to Canadian companies in Colombia, including Frontera Energy. PBI-Colombia accompanied CSPP and COSPACC have drawn attention to the criminalization of eight social leaders, including two women, opposed to Frontera’s operations in San Luis de Palenque, Casanare.

Anne-Marie Levesque, Head of Gender and Impact at FinDev Canada, is scheduled to speak at this summit on November 12.

FinDev Canada is a wholly owned subsidiary of Export Development Canada with a mandate “to provide financial services to the private sector in developing countries with the aim of combating poverty through economic growth.”

Levesque will be speaking at High Level Event 7 titled: Development Banks as Actors for Change Towards Gender Equality.

The summit program notes: “The panel will address the role and impact of development banks in the achievement of gender equality described in [Sustainable Development Goal 5] and in the promotion of inclusive and sustainable finance for gender responsive policies.”

It adds: “A presentation of a field study on gender equality within [the International Finance Development Club] will illustrate this commitment, as well as concrete examples of the financing of gender and climate justice.”

Prior to the summit, PBI signed this letter that highlighted: “In many instances, PDB supported activities have exacerbated poverty and inequality and human rights abuses such as reprisals against human rights defenders and forced evictions, without meaningful redress for affected communities.”

We recommended: “It is a matter of priority to have human rights defenders and communities directly impacted by PDB activities at the table.”

That was followed by this statement from several United Nations Special Rapporteurs, including David R. Boyd from Canada, that echoed the call that summit organizers should create a space for human rights defenders at this conference.

PBI-Canada regrets that space was not created for human rights defenders, women environmental human rights defenders and affected communities to meaningfully participate in and provide input to the Finance in Common Summit.

Given the high level of financing provided to fossil fuel companies by Canadian public development banks we further draw attention to this major study by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature released earlier this year that found that climate change is increasing gender-based violence and that there are numerous examples of violence against women environmental human rights defenders.

Photo: Two of the defenders criminalized for their opposition to Toronto-based Frontera Energy in San Luis de Palenque, Casanare, Colombia.

The United Nations has highlighted that climate change severely undermines human rights, that its scope is an unprecedented threat to human rights, and that it is a serious aggravator of gender-based violence against women.

While the UN COP21 climate summit in Paris aspired to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5C, the nationally determined contributions (the emission reductions each country pledged to reach by 2030) would result in 3C of warming.

The Paris Agreement in 2015 also stipulated that every five years countries would put forward more ambitious nationally determined contribution targets.

The Guardian now reports: “Leading nations have made a spate of commitments that have transformed the prospects for COP26: countries responsible for more than half of global emissions and two thirds of the global economy are now committed to net zero emissions by mid-century – the goal that scientists say is vital to avoid the worst ravages of climate breakdown.”

China has said it will reach net zero emissions by 2060.

The United States, Japan, South Korea, the European Union, and dozens of smaller countries have now also committed to net zero by 2050.

Canada, the fourth largest producer and exporter of oil in the world, has also pledged to reach net zero by 2050.

The United Kingdom may make a similar pledge at the upcoming online Climate Ambition Summit scheduled for December 12 (that will be co-hosted by the UK COP26 Presidency, the United Nations and France, in partnership with Chile and Italy).

The Guardian further highlights: “With the long-term targets in place, attention will turn to [shorter term goals and] the commitments countries are making to reduce emissions in the next decade.”

That is a critical point.

In 2015, Canada pledged to reduce its emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. That would mean a target of 512 megatonnes. But in 2017 Environment Canada projected that Canada could emit between 697 and 790 megatonnes in 2030.

Furthermore, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated emissions must be cut by 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030 to not exceed the 1.5C threshold. Applied to Canada, that would mean a target of 381 megatonnes in 2030.

Beyond the need for more ambitious shorter term nationally determined contribution targets, it is also crucial that the next agreement is legally-binding and that human rights – such as the Indigenous right to free, prior and informed consent as well as protection measures for land and environmental rights defenders – are included in that text.

On average, four land and environmental rights defenders have been killed every week since December 2015 (when the Paris Agreement was signed) and more than one-third of those fatal attacks have been against Indigenous peoples. Land defenders are on the frontline of the fight against climate breakdown and their rights must be upheld.

The UN Human Rights Council has already drawn attention to some of this in its resolution Recognizing the contribution of environmental human rights defenders to the enjoyment of human rights, environmental protection and sustainable development.

PBI-Canada intends to amplify these issues over the next year in the lead-up to the UN COP26 climate summit that will take place November 1-12, 2021.

Photo: A Secwepemc land defender arrested by the RCMP on Secwepemc territory (Kamloops, BC) on December 10, 2018.

A British Columbia provincial court judge has ordered the Government of Canada-owned Trans Mountain Corp. to hand over security correspondence relating to the arrest of three Secwepemc land defenders in 2018.

The Secwepemc land defenders were arrested on December 10, 2018 when they protested a consultation on the pipeline being held by former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Frank Iacobucci at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC.

Defence lawyer Joe Killoran has suggested the altercation was a result of over-policing and a bias among the RCMP and three Trans Mountain security officers (two of whom were previously RCMP officers). Killoran suggested the documents may shed light on alleged racism and bias toward the land defenders.

While land defence is a matter of human rights, the Canadian spy agency CSIS prepared a “top secret” assessment in June 2018 that characterized Indigenous resistance to the Trans Mountain pipeline as a “developing intelligence issue.” The RCMP has also described Wet’suwet’en land defenders opposed to a fracked gas pipeline on their territories as holding a “radicalized ideology.”

The Trans Mountain pipeline would cross 518 kilometres of Secwepemc territory and move 890,000 barrels per day of bitumen from Treaty 8 territories in Alberta to Coast Salish territories on the British Columbia coast for export on super tankers.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first approved the Trans Mountain pipeline in November 2016. In May 2018, the Canadian government bought the pipeline.

Then in August 2018 the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that the government had not sufficiently consulted with Indigenous peoples before approving the pipeline. Iacobucci was appointed in October 2018 to lead a new consultation process. It was shortly after this that the Secwepemc land defenders were arrested in Kamloops.

The government approved the pipeline a second time in June 2019.

In December 2019, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, called on Canada to stop construction on the pipeline until it had secured the free, prior and informed consent of the Secwepemc peoples.

The five-day trial for the Secwepemc land defenders begins on November 16. A FundRazr to help raise funds for the legal defence of Secwepemc land defenders is here. 

The annual meeting of the Canada Development Investment Corporation, the Crown corporation that owns Trans Mountain Corp., will be held on November 17.

On Monday November 9, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called President-elect Joe Biden to congratulate him on his win and to talk about key issues including the construction of the Calgary-based TC Energy Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Biden has said he opposes the pipeline, Trudeau supports it.

The day prior to the call, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said protecting Keystone XL is a top priority for the Canadian government.

The 1,947-kilometre pipeline would move 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day from Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska where it would connect with existing infrastructure to refineries in Oklahoma and down the line in Texas on the Gulf Coast.

The pipeline route runs for 529 kilometres in Canada through Alberta (Treaty 6 territory) and Saskatchewan (Treaty 4) where it would cross the border at Montana, then proceed through South Dakota and Nebraska.

This past May, TC Energy built a 2-kilometre section of Keystone XL across the Saskatchewan-Montana border and started work on camps in Montana and South Dakota.

The Associated Press has reported that members of several tribes in Montana and South Dakota travelled to the border to protest this.

That article adds that the Governor of South Dakota was trying to force two tribes – the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes and the Oglala Sioux Tribe – to remove coronavirus checkpoints they have set up on highways that connect to pipeline construction sites.

There are at least 16 Native American nations in South Dakota, North Dakota and Nebraska opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline.

In late June, the Indigenous Environmental Network highlighted: “For over a decade, Indigenous nations and communities have continuously denied consent to the KXL pipeline from crossing their territories, citing environmental concerns, the desecration of sacred sites, treaty rights violations, and the risks of sexual violence connected with man camps.”

Faith Spotted Eagle, a Yankton Sioux Elder, has highlighted: “We are worried about man camps that are coming to our territory. We have seen our women suffer. One out of three women in our nation have been sexually assaulted by non-native people.”

By August, it was reported that the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, and the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation were leading pending challenges against Keystone XL in US District Court in Montana.

It has been repeatedly argued that Keystone XL lacks the free, prior and informed consent of Native American nations, a right upheld in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Construction of Keystone XL in Canada was approved by the National Energy Board in March 2010. By early October of this year, about 90 kilometres of the 269 kilometre pipeline route in Alberta had been constructed.

The Canadian government is lobbying to stop Biden from cancelling the pipeline before the start of the construction season in the summer of 2021.

If completed, Keystone XL would allow for a 36 per cent increase in production in the tar sands and increase greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 22 million tonnes a year. It would also cross waterways and put the human right to water at risk.

The scheduled in-service date for the pipeline is 2023.