JAPAN HAS been accused of “walking away” from the global goal of averting dangerous climate change by offering yesterday to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by only 8 per cent, relative to 1990 levels, between now and 2020.
Japanese prime minister Taro Aso, who announced this minimalist new target in Tokyo, was immediately branded by environmentalists attending the latest round of climate talks in Bonn as “George W Aso”, a reference to the former US president.
“The move is apparently an attempt by Aso to claim the mantle of George W Bush, who retired in disgrace after eight years of blocking progress on climate change,” according to Avaaz, a global organisation that campaigns on major issues.
Aso was nominated by acclamation as the winner of its special “Fossil of the Day” award – a bento box filled with coal – for “doing more to obstruct progress” in advance of the crucial United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen in December.
European Union delegates at the Bonn talks were said to be “bitterly disappointed” by what Japan put on the table.
However, Pat Finnegan, of the Grian environmental group, said it was “early days yet in the negotiations and you don’t open with your best offer”.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), when asked about the Japanese offer at a press conference, said: “I think for the first time in 2½ years in this job, I don’t know what to say.”
Later, he commented that all of the targets tabled so far – including the EU’s 20 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 – were “nowhere near what the IPCC [the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] has pointed to as what’s needed”.
In its most recent (2007) assessment of the scientific evidence, the IPCC suggested that cuts of 25 to 40 per cent by developed countries would be needed by 2020 to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere and avoid dangerous global warming.
Describing this ambitious scenario as “a beacon that we need to keep in the corner of our eye”, Mr de Boer said that developed countries would have to put more ambitious reduction targets on the table. However, he also said he was “not willing to be pinned down on it”.
But he conceded that there was “no agreement on a collective target” among the developed countries, including the US and EU, and no complete list of by how much each of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol was prepared to reduce its emissions by 2020.
“What I think is fundamentally important, critical and achievable is for Copenhagen to deliver clarity on developed country targets, and the contributions we might expect from developing countries [such as China] and we also need clarity on resources.”
On all of these fronts, Mr de Boer said that he believed ongoing high-level talks between the US and China were “incredibly valuable” towards achieving an outcome in Copenhagen, or at least in establishing a “sound base” on which to build a comprehensive global deal.
Oxfam International, in a new report launched yesterday, said only the rich countries could “break the deadlock now crippling international climate negotiations”, by cutting emissions at home and helping poorer countries to do likewise.
The report, Hang Together or Separately?, suggests that the EU needed to cut its emissions by 44 per cent, rather than the 20-30 per cent range currently on offer, while the US should aim for 45 per cent, instead of the 14 per cent now being proposed.
EU finance ministers, who met in Luxembourg on Tuesday, were accused yesterday by the Climate Action Network of ignoring advice from the European Commission that substantial aid should now be pledged to assist developing countries. It called on EU leaders, at their summit meeting next week, to put forward “clear finance commitments [to] repay their carbon debt to developing countries” by helping them to reduce their emissions and deal with the adverse impacts of climate change.
With Copenhagen less than six months away, young climate activists have formed a group called “tck tck tck” and can be seen around the highly congested Hotel Maritim conference in their red T-shirt emblazoned with the words “negotiator tracker”.