Japan has not been sitting idle, however. For five years from April 2004, a team of some 60 researchers was engaged in studying scenarios to achieve 60 to 80 per cent cuts in Japan’s CO2 emissions from 1990 levels by 2050. The research explored the possibility of drastically reducing emissions along with making desired socioeconomic changes. Now known widely as setting the stage for achieving a ‘low-carbon society’, the research results led the Japanese government to set the targets of reducing GHG emissions by 25 per cent by 2020 and by 80 per cent by 2050. More than 100 experts in Japan are currently engaged in developing sector specific policies and roadmaps to achieve a low-carbon society in such areas as housing and architecture, transportation, regional development, manufacturing and energy systems. This is being carried out within a subcommittee of the Ministry of Environment’s Central Environment Council.
There have also been significant attempts by local municipalities to prepare roadmaps for sustainable development. Shiga Prefectural Assembly is now debating budgetary measures to implement a roadmap. Kyoto City announced a municipal ordinance designed to curb GHG emissions by 25 per cent by 2020 and by 40 per cent by 2030 on October 12, 2010. Furthermore, a research group called the Asia-Pacific Integrated Model (AIM) team, is bringing together researchers from China, India, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia and Vietnam to develop scenarios to achieve low-carbon societies in Asia.
At the time of writing, the Minutes of Memorandum for a project designed to develop a low-carbon society scenario for Malaysia were being signed. This project was adopted this year as a Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS) project by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The project will explore, together with local governments and municipalities, ways to realise low-carbon society through sustainable development by means of a computer simulation modeling exercise in the Iskandar Malaysia region, focusing on the rapidly developing city of Johor Bahru.
Climate change negotiations are entangled in vested national interests. It is time to get back to the basics of the kind of society we want to achieve. What is needed then is to draw up the best plan to realise such a society by combining advanced technologies, institutions, policies and wisdom. It is also important to define the roles of relevant actors and designing projects that involve multiple stakeholders in the policy-making process. If the contents of the projects are realised, they should lead to the desired summit (the society we want to achieve) regardless of the course of negotiations. This climbing is not for someone else, but to realise our own hopes.
Junichi Fujino is Senior Researcher, Climate Policy Assessment Section, Center for Global Environmental Research (CGER), National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan.
This article was originally published here by the Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies.