Posted on 10 March 2010
Tokyo, Japan: Japan
is at risk of undermining its own recent
commitments on carbon emissions reductions
during a confused – and confusing – debate
on forthcoming climate legislation, WWF
said today.
WWF is calling on a
high-level Cabinet Member Committee meeting
regarding climate change on Thursday to
stick with the already outlined absolute
emissions reductions of 25 per cent below
11000 levels by 2020 agreed under the Copenhagen
Accord framework, and with the ‘cap and
trade’ scheme outlined as a key mechanism
for achieving the target.
The climate bill, to
be presented to the full cabinet including
Prime Minister Hatoyama on Friday, is being
criticized by heavy industry labour unions
for possible job loss while some government
ministries are promoting a carbon intensity
framework for emissions reductions.
Intensity-based emissions
trading schemes however seriously undermines
the environmental integrity of the bill
- absolute emissions would increase with
production even if intensity-based targets
are achieved.
“If the bill includes
"intensity-based" emissions trading
schemes then it does not consider the emissions
cap that the Japanese government has promised
to the Japanese people during the elections
and to the world following the Copenhagen
Accord,” said Naoyuki Yamagishi, WWF-Japan's
Head of Climate Change.
“It should have “absolute-based"
emissions trading, which is crucial for
the scheme to be called “cap and trade”
scheme.”
Japanese civil groups
are also calling on the government to drop
the conditionality clauses in the new bill
that threaten to tie Japanese action on
climate change to a successful international
agreement which includes all the major economies.
“Japan should not send
wrong signals by making its action absolutely
conditional to an international agreement,”
said Yamagishi. “It will not only jeopardize
the credibility of the Japanese target internationally
but will also slow down domestic actions.”
“The current language in the bill could
be interpreted as Japan doing nothing to
reduce emissions if there is no comprehensive
international agreement.”
Japan's pledge to cut
greenhouse-gas emissions to 25 per cent
below 11000 levels by 2020 is one of the
most ambitious in the world.
Japanese civil society
groups are also not wishing to see the climate
bill being used as a vehicle for an expansion
of nuclear power plants.
They would also like
to see feed-tariffs for renewable energy
that require power companies to buy all
the energy produced from all kinds of sustainable
renewable energies and not, as proposed,
just surplus power from domestic solar installations.
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