Climate Change

Following the release of the NDG's Criteria and Principles for the Use of Voluntary or Non-regulatory Initiatives to Achieve Environmental Policy Objectives, the NDG decided to explore opportunities to apply its findings against a current issue. One area in which voluntary approaches were likely to play a major role was in the management of greenhouse gas emissions as part of Canada's commitments through the Kyoto Protocol. During the development of Canada's national climate change strategy, the NDG convened two workshops to identify areas in which the group could make a unique contribution to ensuring that the resulting voluntary programs were credible and effective.

In late 2000, the NDG launched a project to explore the use of covenants (formal agreements between government and industry) in the management of GHG emissions. The project had two components. The first sought to identify the contextual issues, general characteristics and the content required in order to make covenants both credible and effective - essentially a practical application of the NDG criteria and principles. The second component was an assessment of the potential for various types of incentives to influence performance under a covenant. Project participants were particularly interested in stimulating a "step change" or order of magnitude improvement in GHG emissions reductions through voluntary action.

Participants in this initiative were: Alberta Environment, Alcan, Environmental Defense, International Institute for Sustainable Development, Natural Resources Canada, Noranda, Pembina Institute for Appropriate Development, Pollution Probe, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy, TransAlta, and VCR Inc.

Project report:

Developing Credible And Effective Covenants For The Management Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (pdf, 98 KB)