At Americana 2005, the fifth Panamerican Environmental Technology Trade Show and Conference, held in Montreal in March, one of the speakers was Benjamin Rosen of AmeriCompass, Mexico City. (He's the author of a 250-page study entitled "The Mexican Environmental Sector-Market Study on Canadian Export Opportunities.)
The Mexican environmental market's growth rate over the last few years has been approximately 14%, second only to Chile's 18%. Standing at US$4 billion in 2000, it's projected to reach app US$23 billion by 2010.
Canadian business prospects
What are the opportunities for Canadian business?
The Canadian government claims to be doing a lot in its efforts to address climate change, particularly initiatives which create emissions reductions in developing countries through export of green technology developed in Canada: www.climatechange.gc.ca
And there's plenty of business opportunities: CO2e.com, for instance, has teamed up with the Gowlings Environmental Group (and Mitsui) to provide a full range of climate change advisory services for industry associations and corporations in Canada.
Pollution, like terror and disease, is sans frontieres. One of the world's foremost conferences on economic trends, the Conference de Montreal, in May this year attracted many Latin Americans, keen to find out what is gong on, and to network. Its founder-organizer Gil Remillard declared that the "Implementation of the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas emissions and loss of confidence in financial markets "directly or indirectly affects everyone."
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
And of course Canadian companies are cooperating with their near neighbour and by far their most important trading partner, the US. Suncor, for instance, back in March 1998 became one of the the first Canadian oil companies to pioneer the world of environmental trading systems by buying credits from the New York utility, Niagara Mohawk.
" This move helped intensify bilateral climate change research and development in such areas as carbon sequestration and sinks, emissions accounting, and market-based approaches. Robert Hornung, climate change director with the Pembina Institute,welcomed the move, called it Suncor's "investment in learning."
Ontario to take only one Canadian province, has an environment industry which has annual sales and exports of over $6 billion and employs over 50,000 people (see www. envirodirectory.on.ca)
Not everyone happy
But not everyone's happy with market solutions. Environmentalists in Brazil , for instance, are worried about definition, location, and allocation, of carbon sinks, carbon leakage, "CO2-olonization", as too are various ngo's in Canada, and elsewhere.
Concerns about carbon leakage and other aspects of the new pollution-abatement credit system were vociferously expressed in the Chilean congress in May this year. On May 23 Inter Press announced that: A draft law introduced by the Chilean government that would create a pollution credit system has run into resistance from environmentalists and even ruling coalition lawmakers, who allege that it transforms the principle of "the polluter pays" into "the polluter gains."
According to prominent environmentalist Sara Larrain, the head of the Sustainable Chile Programme, the initiative runs counter to the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms of "joint implementation and clean development," which allow an industrialized state to meet its emissions reduction targets by investing in developing countries.
She pointed out that such investment must specifically go towards forestry plantations that serve as carbon sinks or into alternative energy projects based on renewable sources that do not generate CO2 emissions, like the sun, wind, or micro-hydropower plants.
One of the hurdles keeping such investment from coming to Chile is the lack of a law aimed at promoting renewable, green-friendly energy sources, said Larrain.
Still problems on the horizon
So there are lots of problems to solve. And beyond that, there's the underlying financial uncertainty in the world, as Remillard entre autres stressed, and Latin America’s institutional infrastructure. In May this year Jorge Castaneda, Mexico's foreign minister from 2000 to 2003 told the readers of Foreign Affairs that the main obstacles to growth are the poor quality of governmental institutions and corporate practices. Reforming both is perhaps the region's greatest challenges-and last opportunity-to return to growth. These reforms require political will, resources, and a friendly international environment."
Canada doesn't have the same deep institutional weaknesses as Latin America, and indeed its own regional tensions might even be eased a bit with some environmental improvement programmes. Of the money Ottawa has set aside to implement its Kyoto strategy, about $575 million is being considered to encourage Western farmers to grow crops that can be processed into clean-burning ethanol, and to processors that can make the chemical conversions.
It's to be so large that within seven years, 35 per cent of all the gasoline sold in Canada will contain at least 10 per cent plant- based ethanol.
But optimism remains
On the other side of Canada, in Montreal at the Americana 2003 conference, Fred Day and his colleagues from Via Nautica, Salvador, Brazil, were unabashedly optimistic:
"In Brazil the national CDM office has yet to be opened, however, with the advent of the new Brazilian government, there is a positive movement towards the implementation of the CDM office, and assignment of responsibilities to specific departments, ministries, and agencies. The Brazilian universities are playing a very strong and important role in the "pre-development" phase.
There are bi-lateral negotiations between some developed and developing countries that are independent of the Kyoto protocol. Projects are being developed under these agreements and Brazilian government approval is well advanced in most circumstances. Forestation and reforestation projects are also predominant."
Ours , Day goes on, "is a Joint Venture Partner with Marbek Resource Consultants in the delivery of a program called: "Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction in Brazilian Industry"(GERBI). This is a 2.5 year program with an approximate budget of C$2,000,000 from the Canada Climate Change Fund, administered by the Canadian International Development Agency. The project is initially being delivered in 4 Brazilian states.
GERBI is working with the Brazilian financial community; the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and the Center for Energy and the Environment of IBMEC (a Brazilian business institute www.ibmec.br) where we hope to generate a clearing house of energy and environmental project development and financing information through an open architecture design available to all who wish to participate.
And Marbek is involved in a similar CCCF program with another partner, and they are delivering this program in South Africa."
* Dr. Alexander Craig is a writer based in Quebec. Formerly Buenos Aires correspondent for the Guardian and other British papers, he then wrote his Ph.D., at Manchester, on the politics of development.
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