When the dozen-strong Yukon delegation hits the tarmac in Denmark later this week, the territory will be among the best represented jurisdictions in Canada, if not the world, at the United Nations' climate change talks in Copenhagen.

Per capita, Yukoners get one delegate per 2,750, compared to the Canadian federal contingent – 47 delegates – offering one voice per 702,000 folks nationwide.

Meanwhile, British Columbia's 3.9 million residents get Premier Gordon Campbell and one aide to speak on their behalf.

That's right. British Columbia is sending just two delegates and the Yukon is dispatching 12 for a jurisdiction whose population is less than one per cent of B.C.'s.

But Environment Minister Elaine Taylor calls the Yukon's presence at Copenhagen "pivotal”.

The reasons: an opportunity to raise awareness, "not only in our own nation but the world – that the impacts of climate change on the North ... the challenges that these impacts are having on forests, wildlife, water, infrastructure and our own people.”

The cost for a week in Copenhagen to get this vital information out (the delegation is sitting out the first week of the near-fortnight long conference): $80,000.

Granted, it's a better bang for the dollar than the Yukon's sister territory, the N.W.T., is getting. The Northwest Territories' seven-member-strong delegation is costing that government $86,000, a fact not lost on Taylor.

"I'm not familiar with what B.C. is doing but the N.W.T. is sending a comparable delegation,” she said.

"Each of these (Yukon) individuals that are going will have a specific role to provide at the conference.”

In all, 192 nations are slated to take part in COP-15, the punchy abbreviation for the 15th Annual United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen.

In addition to participating in meetings with other nations' sub-governments (i.e. provinces, territories and states), the Yukon's delegates will be a part of wholly Canadian meetings at the conference.

According to Taylor, one of the Yukon government's participants is to be an observer with the federal delegation directly involved in negotiations aimed at cutting worldwide carbon emissions.

As for her own role, Taylor said she plans to make the need for mitigating carbon emissions – what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change blames for global warming – a matter of human rights.

"Climate change is about poverty, it is about human rights, it's not just an environmental challenge; it's an economic challenge and it's a social issue,” she said.

It is a similar argument that Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier makes when speaking about the impacts of climate change on traditional lifestyles in the Arctic.

The irony is, however, that India and China – two developing nations among the world leaders in emitting carbon – posit that cutting their use of fossil fuel amounts to the same thing.

Access to cheap energy via fossil fuels has raised the standard of living in Europe, North America and other parts of the globe, and China and India want the same opportunity to achieve comparable results.

Currently, coal-fired power plants produce 70 per cent of China's electricity needs, so what many hope is that the conference will influence countries like China and India to adopt more green energy solutions.

With 192 competing national interests at Copenhagen and concerns among most that drastic measures will hurt their economies, it's very unlikely that a deal to drastically reduce carbon emissions in the short-term will come from COP-15.

This in mind, a more recent rallying cry for adaptation has joined the calls for world governments to fight climate change by curtailing their production and use of fossil fuels.

"Even if we were to stop all of our emissions today, we would still have to adapt to changes and there's no question these changes are alive and well in the Yukon,” Taylor said.

"In the North, we are experiencing changes in the caribou herds, many of which are in decline ... it's affecting our roads and infrastructure.”

For its part, the Yukon government has pledged to become carbon-neutral by 2020, as stated in its Climate Change Strategy.

Last week, the Yukon government failed to sign on to NDP member Todd Hardy's letter to the federal government urging it to cut Canada's carbon emissions to 80 per cent below its 1990 average by 2050, and to implement a carbon tax and cap and trade system.