Questions about Japan’s record on global warming

Tokyo (Inter Press Service (IPS)/PINA Nius Online) – Japan is headed for this week’s talks on global warming with few proposals to reduce its greenhouse gas production, say critics.

They add that the record of Japan – host of United Nations negotiations on the Kyoto climate change convention in 1997 – is nothing to be proud of.

Japan remains far from the target it agreed to then to reduce its production of greenhouse gases, which cause global warming, by 6 percent of the 1990 level.

Government reports indicate that greenhouse emissions in Japan have to be reduced 11 percent from the current 13 million tons emitted per year to meet 1990 levels.

Ahead of the sixth conference of parties to the climate change convention in The Hague, Japan is also saying that its managed forests can play a role in reducing 3.7 percent of its greenhouse gases because they help absorb harmful emissions from the combustion of oil and gas.

Industry accounts for 75 percent of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, produced by Japan. The bulk of greenhouse gas production comes from vehicle emissions and the use of oil and gas for electricity, among others.

But ”relying on forest plantations to store carbon pollution from the atmosphere and combat climate change could accelerate the destruction of old-growth native forest,” warns a joint report compiled by the World Wide ,Fund for Nature (WWF) and Greenpeace.

WWF added in a statement that while Japan counts commercial forestry as a carbon-dioxide reducer, it is not counting carbon release when forests are cut down for timber.

Its joint report with Greenpeace also called for the exclusion from the 1997 Kyoto protocol on climate change, of the clause that promotes such carbon sequestration projects.

”Japan wants no environmental standards or common definitions of what a forest is. Japan wants to count everything green that grows – from national parks to urban trees and bushes along the roads,” according to the WWF statement.

Tokyo supports proposals at this week’s conference for industrial countries to give financial and technical support to developing nations for tackling global warming – and then earn ”credits” that can be used to ‘trade’ emissions and try to meet their own reduction targets.

”The key to ensuring the success of the upcoming meeting in The Hague, is support for developing countries,” Environment Agency director general Yoriko Kawaguchi said at a press conference last week, explaining Tokyo’s support for the scheme.

Kawaguchi explained that Japan is poised to propose a new mechanism for providing technical support to developing countries by developed countries.

Likewise, Japan, the world’s top donor, says it intends to increase its aid contributions for environment protection – with emissions trading involved.

At present, Japanese figures say Tokyo spends roughly 25 percent of aid funds for environmental projects.

Kawaguchi says technical support should pave the way for developing nations – which say the burden for cutting back on greenhouses gases lie with the industrialized countries that produce most of them – to accept reduction targets.

But Japan itself is having a hard time meeting its Kyoto targets, and big business is opposed to any move by the government to put conditions on companies in order to meet national reduction targets.