Author: Peter Drysdale

This week at the G20 meetings in Pittsburgh, there will be an important opportunity to shape the outcome of the Copenhagen meeting on climate change in December. Much swings on the position taken by China and the emerging economies. Ross Garnaut discusses that issue and others in the lead this week, one year after he presented his Climate Change Review to the Australian Government. In a tour de force [mp3 audio] on the subject at the ANU last week, he noted that the international regime he proposed in his report has received quite a lot of attention in China and India, as well as Indonesia. These countries are all important members of the G20, another reason why that group should be entrenched as the primary forum for global dialogue on economic and other issues. Garnaut’s argument that convergence towards equal per capita emissions entitlements should form the cornerstone of the international carbon control regime is gathering favour in China and elsewhere as a fair and practical way of getting the big developing countries to commit to carbon emissions targets. Another important contribution that Garnaut made to the international debate was to provide a clear rationale for developed country commitment to funding public investment in carbon-reducing technologies. Australian Prime Minister Rudd stepped forward at the G8 summit in Italy in July to take leadership in funding research on carbon capture and storage. If the G20 can follow this lead in support for public investment across a range of low-emissions technologies, that will be an important step in getting China and the other emerging economies into the tent at Copenhagen.

We precede Garnaut’s lead this week with an important brief on Japan’s new Agriculture Minister, Hirotaka Akamatsu, from Aurelia George-Mulgan. It’s early days yet but there are some signs of a fundamental shift in Japan’s strategy towards support for its agricultural sector. If that were to happen there could be a new dynamic in Japan’s international economic and regional diplomacy. This is an issue to which we shall return for more forensic analysis of the mettle of the new Hatoyama Cabinet in Japan which continues to deserve our close attention.

Related articles:

1. One year after the Garnaut Climate Change Review
2. Japanese election – Weekly editorial
3. East Asia and a new climate deal – Weekly editorial
4. Ross Garnaut at the Australia-China Climate Change Forum

1. Yasukuni shrine
2. Aso calls for a new Japan
3. Hatoyama and the US alliance

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 11:36 am and is filed under Agriculture, Climate Change, Japan, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.