The man in charge of Cop15 ‘I came into politics to continue to be an activist’

Ayoung boy in rural Canada learns the forest he loves will be chopped down, so he scales one of the trees and refuses to leave. He fails in his mission – but the loss resonates deeply. In his adolescence, he studies politics and theology, fascinated by questions of power and moral obligation.

As an adult, he scales the world’s tallest building – then the CN Tower in Toronto – to protest against the destruction of the climate, only leaving when he’s escorted down in handcuffs. He rejects owning a car, cycling through the rain, sleet and ice of a Quebec winter. A local newspaper calls him “Green Jesus”.

Fast forward to April 2022, that same man, Steven Guilbeault, permits an oil-drilling project off the coast of Newfoundland in his role as Canada’s minister of environment and climate change.

Guilbeault, 52, a self-described “radical pragmatist”, will lead Canada as co-host of Cop15, the two-week biodiversity summit that starts next Wednesday in Montreal. China holds the Cop15 presidency but owing to concerns over Covid, the conference moved to Canada.

As the former environmental campaigner-turned-minister struggles to forge consensus amid a growing urgency, he has found himself caught between two competing worlds.

“Politicians tend to use the word ‘leaders’ on just about everything they do – a bit too lightly. On climate change, Canada is playing catch-up. We, unlike some of our peers, haven’t been very systematic in our efforts to reduce emissions,” Guilbeault says. “But I think that has started to change.”

In October, Guilbeault travelled to South America to meet ministers from Colombia, Chile and Argentina, previewing his government’s approach to securing an understanding of the parameters needed to address habitat and biodiversity – and how to secure funding to reverse it. In November, he attended the Cop27 climate conference.

There is growing optimism – and a renewed sense of momentum – that delegates from the 196 nations that will attend Cop15 can emerge with some semblance of progress in protecting the dwindling resources necessary for life on the planet.

As delegates prepare to meet and fuss over wording for the more than 20 draft targets, Guilbeault is cast as an enigmatic figure – a man who has attended such conferences as both government official and frustrated activist.

Born in rural Quebec, the softly spoken son of a butcher spent the early 1990s deeply embedded in the activist community, and along with five colleagues formed a group to address environmental issues and poverty. Guilbeault then joined Greenpeace in 1997 and three years later, amid pressure on Canada to ratify the Kyoto protocol, he illegally scaled Toronto’s CN tower with fellow campaigner Chris Holden, displaying a banner that declared: “Canada and Bush Climate Killers”. He was sentenced to a year’s probation and forced to pay some of his rescue costs.

The direction of his activism began to shift in the early 2000s, when he started working within government, advising on environmental and energy policy.

The eventual move to the governing Liberal party in 2019 seems incongruent for activists; one of the country’s most famous environmentalists willingly joined a government that bought an oil pipeline. He’s been branded a “traitor” by some, who accuse him of swapping commitment for ambition.

“When activists feel they have to criticise me, they do it. And they haven’t shied away from it, which I totally understand,” he says.

At the same time, he has made few friends in oil-rich regions of the country, where political leaders protested against his appointment to cabinet amid fears that he would bring a vein of environmental radicalism to the federal government.

As environment minister, Guilbeault has managed to offend both sides. He has approved a controversial oil project and set ambitious targets on preserving wildlands. He has come down hard on plastics pollution but

has not yet put the nation on track to meet its most ambitious climate commitments.

Guilbeault has pushed the country towards climate action more than any of his predecessors. And if it means making concessions to secure larger more durable wins, so be it, he says. “Every day when I get up, I see my role as pushing the envelope in government. In many ways, nothing has changed from what I used to do.”

He admits the government has been slow to defend the environment. “There is this narrative that Canada has never met any of its climate targets. And it’s true, we haven’t. But we’ve never tried. And on nature and biodiversity and climate, I think we are starting to see that it’s possible to do that.”

He points to the expansion of marine protected areas and a concerted effort to make Indigenous communities the stewards of vast and ecologically critical swaths of land.

But policy experts caution the public has “good reason to be wary” of Justin Trudeau’s government.

“Canada is still one of the worst climate offenders in the world,” said Jessica Green, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. “We have some of the highest per capita emissions and we’re still investing in fossil fuel infrastructure, which is, at this point, unconscionable.”

It is those projects that have handed Guilbeault’s critics their most powerful line of attack. Off the eastern coast of Newfoundland, the Norwegian oil company Equinor plans to extract 300m barrels of oil from more than a kilometre below the seabed, delivering crude oil to a floating terminal.

Guilbeault repeatedly delayed approving the project but in April, subjecting the company to 137 conditions, including that the project would reach net zero emissions by 2050, he approved it.

“It was a huge failure of leadership. And I’m truly saddened that a level of backbone didn’t appear,” said Gretchen Fitzgerald, a campaigner with the Sierra Club, which is challenging the decision in court.

Guilbeault has admitted that the decision weighs on him still. But he said he was bound by recommendations from the country’s permitting agency, which concluded the project’s effects would be minimal.

“It’s easy for an activist to tar him with a broad brush and say, ‘You’re a traitor and you’re not doing enough’,” said Green, who specialises in climate crisis governance. “It’s really hard to actually get things done. At the end of the day, it depends on what your model of change is. If you think that pushing from inside catalyses movement, then being in the halls of government makes sense.”

Guilbeault insists the thread of idealism that sent him clambering up that tree decades ago remains unbroken. Idealism is very important, he has said. “I came into politics so I could continue to be an activist. My commitment hasn’t changed at all.”