EU and Japan Agree on Joint Climate Change Efforts
The EU and Japan confirmed their commitment to fighting climate change and announced they would work together to find a fair and effective global mechanism to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012 at their summit in Tokyo on Wednesday.
The post-Kyoto agreement would seek to involve all key global economies, including the US, which has stayed out of the Kyoto Protocol.
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, whose country currently presides over the EU, admitted at the press conference after the summit that there were still some differences between the EU and Japan in how to go about tackling climate change, but added that the options were many.
"The important thing is that we agree on the goal. It is crucial that developed countries, especially the G8 group of the industrially most advanced nations reach an agreement, to include all positive approaches and then to go about helping developing countries," Jansa said.
"I'm confident that we will be able to get the emerging economies and countries that have not participated in Kyoto on board," he added.
In a joint statement released after the summit, the EU and Japan said that fast-growing economies should participate in efforts to cut global warming to the best of their ability.
While the EU has made it its goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and to raise the share of renewables in the energy mix to 20% by 2020, Japan has opted to set goals for specific industries first before forming an overall binding goal.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso pointed out that EU leaders confirmed the bloc's ambitious goals at their summit in March. He added that the EU would be willing to upgrade its efforts even further if other developed countries did the same.
Barroso said that he was counting on an agreement in the G8, which is presided by Japan in 2008. "What we spoke about today is important for an agreement in the G8 at the summit in Hokaido in July," he said.
Asked whether the EU's goal of using biofuels is contributing to the global rise in food prices, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso stressed that the bloc was working to promote the use of a new generation biofuels, whose production does not affect the environment.
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said that one of the topics of today's talks were the rising food prices and that it was agreed measures needed to be taken as high food prices affected poor countries the most.
He added that he had written to the UN and the World Bank on the issue, while the EU and Japan would in the future better coordinate their standpoints regarding key global challenges, especially in Africa.
At their annual summit, the EU and Japan furthermore agreed to strengthen cooperation in improving consumer protection.
The officials also exchanged views on global political developments, especially in Asia, although the joint statement issued after the meeting makes no mention of Tibet. There is also no mention of Kosovo.
Jansa told the Slovenian press after the meeting that talks did touch on these two issues. "We were interested in Japan's views on the developments in China and we agreed that these are challenging processes, where one must be patient. On the other hand, we presented the situation in Europe to the Japanese side."
According to the Slovenian prime minister, today's was a candid conversation between strategic partners with similar views on three key international issues: peacekeeping and security, climate change and the fight on poverty.
The EU delegation was headed by Jansa and Barroso and also included the External Relations Commission Benita Ferrero-Waldner and the Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson.
After the conclusion of the summit, the participants and a number of other guests attended a reception that was addressed by Jansa, who made his welcome address in Japanese. He pointed out to an "interesting coincidence": that the first EU-Japan summit took place exactly in the year that Slovenia gained independence.
Barroso stressed that the summit showed that the EU and Japan were strategic partners who wished to bolster their cooperation and come up with answers to some of the world's most burning problems.
More articles from this issue:
Archive
|