What’s Canada’s position on the fate of polar bears?

The five Arctic nations (Canada, Norway, Denmark/Greenland, Russia, USA) signed a binding Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears in 1973 that includes provisions to protect the bears and their habitat. The same parties met again in Norway last week and emerged from their three-day session having agreed in a written statement that “impacts of climate change and the continued and increasing loss and fragmentation of sea ice—the key habitat for both polar bears and their main prey species—constitutes the most important threat to polar bear conservation.”  

 

Their statement formally recognized “the urgent need for an effective global response that will address the challenges of climate change”.

 

The announcement was praised by environmental groups, including WWF-Canada, whose representatives traveled to Norway but were excluded from the meeting. 

 

WWF has long argued that the fate of the polar bear is inextricably linked to climate change and that, without concerted and urgent action to halt climate change, the polar bear populations are doomed to decline.

 

Prior to the meeting, there had been concern that the Canadian Government was reluctant to acknowledge the connection between climate change and polar bear habitat. With last week’s unequivocal declaration, it seemed that these concerns were finally laid to rest. 

 

However, just hours after the meeting, Minister Prentice suggested that climate change might in fact be good for polar bears: “I don’t think anyone disagrees the whole process of climate change has implications for polar bears,” Prentice told the Winnipeg Free Press. “What those implications are is still under scientific investigation. It could be positive, it could be negative.”

 

The Minister’s comment appears to contradict the declaration Canada’s representatives had just signed.

 

We hope this is not an indication that this agreement will go the way of the Kyoto Accord—another binding international agreement that Canada signed, but then ignored. With a new round of international climate change negotiations due to wrap up next December in Copenhagen, we’ll soon find out.

 

Scott