As the world heads towards crucial global climate talks in Paris in December, and Premier Abe and President Obama met in Washington D.C., Japan's role in climate leadership is on my mind. In December 1997 in Kyoto, I worked closely with Japanese colleagues to negotiate the first internationally binding agreement to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.
Japan provided more than a venue. Under the leadership of premier Ryutaro Hashimoto, Japan's negotiators were tireless in their pursuit of agreement -- one we finally secured after a marathon all-night negotiating session in Kyoto.
Japan's support did not end with the signing of the Kyoto Protocol. In the years to come, Japan's diplomats worked behind the scenes to encourage partners around the world to ratify the agreement they had helped forge, ensuring that it entered into force in 2005.
Nearly 20 years on, Japanese innovation is no less in demand. This fact is an underlying rationale for the Japanese government's Innovation for Cool Earth Forum (ICEF) aimed at addressing climate change through innovation. A number of Japan's leading companies such as Sony, Toyota and Toshiba are part of leadership fora such as the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, and contributing to debates on the role of business in delivering solutions to climate change.
Japan Inc. recognizes that as the emerging economies of Asia and beyond develop their industrial base, the technologies they adopt must be modern, efficient and impose as small a carbon-footprint as possible. The business opportunity is clear. As an early-mover Japan has an advantage that its companies can, and should, leverage.
For the complete article, please see Kyodo News.
2019 has only just begun, but it is already hard to imagine that there will be other extreme weather events with disastrous consequences such as cyclone Idai happening again this year. In all likelihood, such events will continue to occur as 2019 rolls on. Idai is, once more, proof of how devastating and toxic the mix of climate change, extreme weather events and poverty can be: Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe – countries that rank low in human development but contribute very little to global greenhouse gas emissions – suffer from some of the worst impacts of climate change.
adelphi has relaunched its exhibition Environment, Conflict and Cooperation (ECC) Exhibition to illustrate how unprecedented environmental changes interact with social, political, and economic risks to exacerbate conflict. We invite you to explore our online exhibition and to learn more about urgent issues of our time: climate, energy, migration, extractives, food and water.
Climate security risks are, by all interpretations, a global threat. But when it comes to setting a political climate security agenda, a handful of countries stand out. In an interview with Climate Diplomacy, Michaela Spaeth, Director for Energy and Climate Policy at the German Federal Foreign Office, highlights some of Germany’s goals and challenges in forwarding the issue during its 2019-20 membership in the UN Security Council.
The Planetary Security Conference 2019, which concluded on 20 February, saw a number of workshops being held on the Sahel region and specifically Mali, one of the Conference’s three spotlight regions. These workshops examined the region’s climate-water-security risks as well as the #doable actions and solutions to address these issues.