As Environment Minister Rona Ambrose prepared to make Canada's case before the UN climate conference, environmentalists continued to paint this country as a global warming scofflaw.

In speaking to reporters in Nairobi, Kenya on Tuesday, Ambrose insisted Canada was playing a positive role -- but she didn't back down on the Conservative government's view that Canada cannot attain its Kyoto targets by 2012.

"I think right now we need to get our own house in order and we need to clean up our own back yard," she said. "We need to get our targets in place domestically so we can show the international community that we've made good progress."

Canadian environmentalists blasted Ambrose, who speaks Wednesday at the conference, when the talks enter their ministerial phase.

"It's ridiculous. We absolutely have to make the effort to meet our Kyoto targets. And the really serious problem in Canada is that we have made no effort," said Morag Carter, director of the David Suzuki Foundation.

"The only country that has a Kyoto target and that's turned its back on Kyoto is Canada," said Steven Guilbeault of Greenpeace Canada.

He added that what makes Ambrose's claim particularly objectionable is that "one of the first things her government did when they came to power was abolish pretty much anything that existed in terms of implementation measures."

Liberal MP John Godfrey noted the Tories cancelled things like wind energy incentives and the Energuide program.

Canada signed the climate change-fighting Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and ratified it in 2002 (this conference is to discuss the timetables and quotas that should follow the expiry of the Kyoto pact in 2012). The Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Parties both voted against Kyoto.

By 2012, Canada is supposed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to six per cent below its 1990 levels. Currently, emissions have risen 27 per cent above that 1990 benchmark.

Ambrose told reporters that her department is negotiating short-term targets with industry. They will be announced in mid-January.

Canada's second 'award'

On Tuesday, Canada was handed its second consecutive "fossil" award from the Climate Action Network, which is given to countries deemed to have contributed least to the climate-change fight.

Canada, the U.S. and Australia -- the latter two have signed but not ratified the Kyoto treaty -- were given the prize by the Climate Action Network for obstructing technology transfer to poor countries.

CTV's Africa Bureau Chief Murray Oliver says the awards are meant to embarrass countries into action during the UN climate talks in Nairobi this week.

"Most people here are deeply concerned that Canada's hesitation to support the Kyoto Accord could begin to influence other countries and actually lead to a collapse of the accord," said Oliver.

UN Environment Program Executive Director Achim Steiner said: "Were Canada to become the first country not to fulfill it's commitments under Kyoto, it would certainly be a first building block that falls out of the wall of building a global climate coalition."

Ambrose told reporters that Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, had some sympathy for Canada's position.

"As you know, Yvo de Boer himself said he recognized the challenge Canada is facing," she said.

However, de Boer told a Tuesday news conference he's still looking for answers on Canada's position.

"It's not that Canada hasn't committed to the 2012 levels they signed up to in the Kyoto Protocol," he said. "My understanding is that the Canadian prime minister and the minister of the environment indicated that the Kyoto targets are unachievable.

"I'm very much looking forward to Madame Ambrose arriving so I can ask her what the implications of that announcement are."

Ambrose is actually at the conference.

She also talked of "adaptation" to climate change. Experts say that while adaptation is part of the solution, it's not a substitute for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The minister has previously talked about "intensification," which means using energy more efficiently while allowing overall greenhouse gas emissions to rise.

Why Canada looks bad

CTV's Murray Oliver reported that Canada looks particularly bad because many other industrialized nations are looking good.

The European Union says by 2020, it will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 15 to 30 per cent.

The EU might consider imposing penalties on those nations that snub Kyoto.

"Europe has to use all its weight to stand up to this sort of environmental dumping," Dominique de Villepin, France's prime minister, told a Tuesday meeting in Paris on sustainable development.

"I would like us to study now, with our European partners, the principle of a carbon tax on the import of industrial products from countries that refuse to commit themselves to the Kyoto protocol after 2012."

The economics of climate change arose in another way.

The UN's Achim Steiner said the weather-related damage caused by climate change will have a one-year price tag of US$1 trillion at some point within the next 30 years.

The meeting is discussing the possibility of providing insurance to the poor to protect them against the worst impacts.

Africa is expected to suffer even more droughts and floods as a result of climate change, and its poorest residents have no access to conventional insurance.

With a report from CTV's Murray Oliver and files from The Canadian Press