Harumi Ozawa, Yahoo News 9 Jun 08;
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, vowing a "low-carbon revolution" against global warming, on Monday unveiled a carbon trading market to slash greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80 percent by 2050.
Defying resistance from business leaders worried about Japan's fragile economic recovery, Fukuda pledged to take the lead before he hosts the Group of Eight summit of rich nations in one month.
Fukuda called for Japan to cut carbon dioxide blamed for global warming by 60 to 80 percent from current levels by 2050, and to introduce an experimental "cap-and-trade" system that mandates emission reductions.
The leader of the world's second largest economy likened the effort to the Industrial Revolution.
"I believe that we need to make an effort to create a low-carbon revolution so that our descendants 200 years from now will look back and be proud of us," Fukuda said.
Fukuda said Japan would next year set a mid-term target -- the hotly debated topic of ongoing international negotiations -- for slashing emissions after the Kyoto Protocol's obligations for rich nations run out in 2012.
The move comes just days after lawmakers from US President George W. Bush's Republican Party blocked a plan to set up a cap-and-trade system in the world's largest polluter, saying it was risky at a time of high oil prices.
Carbon trading has become a flourishing field, particularly in the European Union which has championed the Kyoto Protocol and called for ambitious mid-term and long-term emission reduction targets.
Fukuda gave few details about the carbon market but said it would be launched on an experimental basis -- "as early as this autumn" -- and he called for "the participation of as many sectors and companies as possible."
The premier also called for a tenfold increase in Japan's use of solar power by 2020 and pledged a fresh 1.2 billion dollars for a fund being set up with the United States and Britain to help developing countries cope with climate change.
Some environmentalists said the effort did not go far enough.
Kathrin Gutmann, climate policy coordinator of conservation group WWF, said that the announcement was "blurred" and that the lack of a 2020 target was "utterly disappointing."
Fukuda was "playing a numbers game to avoid a commitment to deep emission reductions," she said. "Fukuda will have to announce a clear mid-term target soon."
Negotiations on a post-Kyoto treaty have been bogged down by disagreement over the mid-term target, with developing countries insisting that rich nations historically responsible for climate change must take the lead.
Japanese industry, particularly steelmakers and the power industry, have in turn feared the economic costs of a cap-and-trade system and noted that Japan is already more energy efficient than most countries.
Industry has also argued that the 1990 base used to set Kyoto obligations is biased towards the European Union since at that time many future members were heavy polluters in the communist bloc and Britain had not finished privatising its coal industry.
Fukuda agreed with industry on the point, saying: "The action plan won't be successful unless we make changes based on the latest data."
Naoyuki Hata, director of Kiko Network, a Japanese environmental organisation, expressed concern, noting Japan's emissions had risen significantly since 1990.
"I cannot help thinking he was influenced by industry, which simply prefers not having to reduce emissions," he said.
But Jean Jouzel, a French climate expert who is on the executive panel of the UN's Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), praised the initiative.
He said that even though Japan's carbon emissions have risen rather than waned since 1990, such a large long-term cut would more than compensate for it.
"So it's a good effort by Japan," he told AFP in Paris.
The IPCC has warned that unless human-made climate change is halted, the world risks more natural disasters and droughts, putting millions of people at risk.
Fukuda is taking the decision despite sagging popularity at home, with his coalition losing another election on Sunday and the opposition preparing a censure motion against the government.
Vague Japan Climate Plan Could Risk its G8 Ambitions
Chisa Fujioka, PlanetArk 9 Jun 08;
TOKYO - A Japanese climate policy plan to be issued next week is likely to set a 2050 target to cut greenhouse gas pollution but it also needs a mid-term emissions goal for Japan to gain credibility at next month's G8 summit, experts say.
Japan is hosting the summit of rich nations to seal an agreement for the world to halve emissions by 2050, a target that the G8 said they would seriously consider at their summit last year in Germany.
But at a time when developing nations are calling for advanced countries to first commit to ambitious targets over a shorter time period, climate experts say Japan might lack bold policies at home to push international negotiations forward.
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is expected to unveil a set of measures on Monday, including a target for Japan to cut emissions by 60-80 percent by 2050, but media reports say he will hold off on setting an interim target until next year.
"I understand a 2050 target is important, but as a practical, political agenda, a medium-term target for 2020 is more important," said Katsuya Okada, the main opposition Democratic Party's point person on climate change, said late on Thursday.
"I don't think we, as politicians, can commit to a target so far away," said Okada, referring to 2050, when he will be 97.
Yurika Ayukawa, vice chairperson of the 2008 Japan G8 Summit NGO Forum, agreed.
"Setting a target for 2050 would be a step forward, but the government needs to make it legally binding and set mid-term targets for 2020 or 2030 to show how it's going to meet that long-term target," she said.
"Unless it commits to a mid-term target, it will be hard to convince developing countries like China, India and Brazil to join a new global framework on fighting climate change."
Big developing nations China, India, Brazil and Indonesia will be at the G8 talks.
About 190 nations have agreed to negotiate a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol by the end of 2009. Kyoto binds 37 industrialised nations to cut emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
As pressure grows on governments to form a new plan, the International Energy Agency called on Friday for a US$45 trillion "energy revolution" to stop carbon emissions more than doubling by 2050.
INDUSTRY BACKLASH
The tough UN-led negotiations, however, have made Japan cautious about committing to numerical targets, with domestic industries having long blamed the government for what they see as unfair goals under the Kyoto agreement, analysts say.
Japan is the world's fifth-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, but the only one among the top five under pressure to meet a Kyoto target.
The United States refused to ratify the protocol, Russia is on track to meet its goal and the pact set no targets for China and India because developing nations are excluded from making emissions cuts during the protocol's first phase that ends in 2012.
Japanese industries also object to the target's base year of 1990, which they say ignores major advances businesses made in the 1980s to increase energy efficiency.
A Japanese trade ministry official has floated 2005 as a "fair" post-Kyoto base year, although Tokyo has not officially specified what it should be.
"They don't trust the government's negotiating skills and that's why they've been unsupportive," said Kuniyuki Nishimura, research director at Mitsubishi Research Institute.
Businesses, led by the powerful Keidanren business lobby, have resisted binding targets as well as mandatory emissions trading akin to that already in place in the European Union.
Fukuda, in his policy speech next week, will say the government will consider introducing an emissions trading system after the Kyoto agreement expires, without giving details on how a future scheme would be designed, media said.
"Japan has come to realise that it can't ignore the huge growth in the EU's emissions trading system and the possibility that the United States will launch its own scheme in the future," said Naoyuki Yamagishi, climate change programme director at WWF Japan.
"Throwing his support behind the idea would also be an easy way for Fukuda to show he is doing something on climate change." (Additional reporting by Risa Maeda; Editing by David Fogarty)
