Tokyo has placed the fight against climate change at the heart of its priorities for 2008. This theme will be noted at the top of the agenda of the EU-Japan summit in Tokyo (23 April), and of the meetings of the G8 environment ministers in Kobe (16-17 May 2008) and the G8 in Hokkaido (7-9 July). In the same breath, Tokyo will also organise the 4th Major Economies Meeting on energy and climate change, also in Hokkaido. The objective, as specified on 26 January 2008 by the Japanese Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda, during the Davos World Economic Forum, is to erect a milestone for a new international agreement in which all countries, and in particular all large CO ₂ emitters, will participate.

Reducing Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050: this is the objective set by the Japanese government by adopting, in 2007, the ‘Cool Earth 50’ initiative, the real cornerstone of its strategy to combat climate change. The ‘Cool Earth Promotion’ programme achieves these orientations in the form of proposals which Japan will present in the framework of international negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire at the end of 2012.

COOL EARTH PROMOTION PROGRAMME

Post-Kyoto regime (after 2012): The United Nations are and must remain at the heart of the current negotiation process, considers Japan, which believes that all countries, including all the large polluters, will have to participate in the new system. Japan will only ratify a new ‘post-Kyoto’ agreement if the United States and China do the same, suggests Tokyo.

According to the new agreement, all large greenhouse gas emitting countries should define national objectives for the reduction of such emissions, on a “just and equitable” basis. To do so, Japan favours the sectoral approach: all these countries should analyse the potential for the reduction of emissions for each sector (industry, building, transport and agriculture) on the basis of indicators founded on energy efficiency and on technologies which will be used in the future. The addition of sectoral reduction potentials will then allow quantifiable national objectives for the reduction of greenhouse gases to be defined. Furthermore, Tokyo estimates that the year which serves as a reference for this calculation should be revised and proposes 2005 instead of 1990, the date of reference of the Kyoto Protocol.

On the other hand, there is no indication of whether or not these objectives will be binding: however, this proposal constitutes a step forward for Japan which, until this time, had taken care not to mention quantifiable objectives for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions until after the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

International cooperation for the environment: The transfer of technology and development aid are the two areas to be developed in this domain, considers Tokyo, for which “aiming towards the most efficient use of energy has become an obligation for humanity”. It is for this reason that Japan suggests improving energy efficiency worldwide by 30% by 2020 in the framework of international environmental cooperation. To this end, it has announced its intention to transfer technologies of high environmental quality to a larger number of countries.

With regard to development aid, Tokyo is to create a new financial mechanism, the ‘ Cool Earth Partnership’, aimed at setting up a fund of US$10 billion to help developing countries in the fight against climate change. Of this total, US$2 billion (in the form of non-reimbursable aid) will be dedicated to climate change adaptation and access to clean energy and US$8 billion (in the form of loans at preferential rates) to measures to alleviate climate change, such as improving the energy efficiency of power stations.

Tokyo also proposes the creation of a new fund for multilateral aid for developing countries, together with the United States and the United Kingdom, and has launched an appeal for the participation of other contributors.

Innovation: The development of new technologies and the evolution towards a low carbon economy are closely linked, underline the Japanese authorities, for whom it is “absolutely critical” to make a technological breakthrough “in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2020”. To achieve the objective of a zero-emissions economy, technologies aimed at strengthening energy efficiency and CO ₂ capture and storage are being targeted in particular. Japan is focusing on the need to strengthen investment in research and development in the field of energy and the environment and has announced its intention to invest US$30 billion in this area over the next five years. Furthermore, it proposes developing an international framework for collaboration, which will allow countries to work closely together with international agencies, such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), to speed up technological development. It should be noted that, according to the most recent data available, Japan is effectively at the forefront in the matter with public investment totalling US$3.9 billion in 2005, compared with US$3 billion for the United States and US$1.2 billion for the European Union ⁽¹⁾.

OTHER PROPOSALS

Two other proposals will no doubt be the subject of bitter discussions on the international arena. The first requires the amendment of Annex I of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which also serves as a basis for commitments made according to the Kyoto Protocol. This annex brings together the 24 member countries of the OECD at the time of  adoption of the convention (1992) as well as Russia and the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe. The countries which do not appear in this list were at the time all grouped together within the G77 (group of developing countries) and are not associated with any binding obligations by the protocol. Since this time, countries such as China and India have seen their CO ₂ emissions rocket and the OECD has welcomed into its group Mexico – which still wears two hats – and South Korea which, like many OPEC member countries and a dozen other countries classified at the time as developing countries (including Singapore and Israel), have a higher GDP per inhabitant than some EU member states. Japan is asking for “clarification” of the distinction between developed and developing countries for “post-2012”. It recommends the development of objective standards to establish a new classification of countries taking into consideration OECD membership and GDP per inhabitant in particular.

The second proposal is more specifically targeted to the European Union since Japan is calling into question the principle of the ‘European bubble’ post-2012. In 1997, the EU committed ‘en bloc’, in the name of its member states (EU15 at the time), to a single global objective for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the framework of the protocol, and then divided the task between its members ‘internally’. This principle could mask the responsibilities inherent to each country, considers Tokyo, which is thus calling for a re-examination from the point of view of equity and efficiency.

KYOTO OBJECTIVES: TOKYO LAGS BEHIND

In the framework of the Kyoto Protocol, Japan should reduce its global greenhouse gas emissions by 6% in 2012 compared with their 1990 level. It is, however, behind schedule in its objectives as demonstrated by a study commissioned by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry from its Agency for Natural Resources and Energy (ANRE), entitled ‘Long-term energy supply and demand outlook’, according to which Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions, far from declining, increased in 2005 by 6.9% compared with 1990. As for CO ₂emissions, which represented 4% of global CO ₂emissions from fossil fuels in 2005, the IEA considers that the increase in Japan’s emissions reached 14.8% between 1990 and 2005 (rising from 1,058 million tonnes/CO ₂ to 1,214 million/CO ₂ in 2005), even if, according to Prime Minister Fukuda, Japan managed to double its GDP over the last 30 years without increasing its industry’s general energy consumption through an increase in energy efficiency. According to Fukuda, if the rate of energy efficiency achieved by Japanese power stations had also been reached in the United States, China and India, this would represent a reduction of 1.3 billion tonnes of CO _2, ie equivalent to Japan’s total annual emissions. This is no doubt a fine example, but Japan still needs to make huge efforts to reach its objectives. And these difficulties explain Tokyo’s reluctance to go beyond ‘indicative’ objectives, ie to binding objectives in the framework of the future agreement.

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⁽¹⁾ Source IEA and European Commission