Japan to Exercise Leadership in Climate Fight: Abe

August 3, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday that his country is determined to exercise leadership in helping the international community address climate change.

"Coping with global warming is no longer the costs of businesses, but a source of their competitiveness," Abe told the inaugural meeting of an experts' panel convened to discuss Japan's long-term strategy for substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The panel will work on the strategy, based on the Paris climate accord that seeks to balance global greenhouse gas emissions and removal in the second half of this century to achieve a postcarbon society.

The pact requires signatory countries to submit long-term strategies, designed to achieve the goal, by 2020. Among the Group of Seven top industrial economies, only Japan and Italy have not yet submitted their plans.

Shinichi Kitaoka, professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo and chair of the panel, told the meeting that Japan can take a leading role in the fight against climate change because the country "is acutely aware of the impact of global warming because of increasing natural disasters."

"We'll win back leadership by taking advantage of the legacy of the Kyoto Protocol," Kitaoka said, referring to the previous climate accord adopted in 1997 in the western Japan city of Kyoto.

Japan has already set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 pct by 2050. The experts' panel is expected to discuss issues such as how financial and investment systems should be for the postcarbon society. Jiji Press