By Xinhua,
Tokyo : The upcoming Group of Eight (G8) summit can hardly achieve a breakthrough on tackling climate change due to different national interests and thinking styles between developed and developing countries and among developed countries themselves.
This is the view held by Ryo Fujikura, a professor at Human Environment Department of Hosei University during an interview with Xinhua on the eve of G8 summit to be held on July 7 to 9 in northern Japan’s Hokkaido Prefecture. Climate Change is believed one of the most important topics dominating the summit.
A SUITABLE PRELUDE OF DISCUSSIONS
This summit will be the first in recent years to grant climate change priority status, rather than a topic concerning agriculture or security as the previous practice, Fujikura said.
“The release of the Fourth Assessment Report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may be the context of this summit’s unprecedented stress on climate change,” Fujikura said.
“Although the factors behind global warming are complicated and many people wonder whether the ice-thawing at the Arctic and frequent typhoons are results of global warming or in normal scope of activities of the earth, the fact is that the earth’s temperature has been rising and people understand that something should be done against it.”
Fujikura noted that climate change was chosen as one of the major topics also because it will be relatively easier for leaders to reach a consensus on the issue.
Compared with issues such as agriculture and employment, where the G8 members vary greatly in their respective situations, environment seems a good common topic and a suitable prelude of the meeting, Fujikura said.
DIFFICULTIES FOR SECTORAL APPROACH & MID-TERM GOALS
On the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) cut, a key to climate change issue, G8 members have their own considerations.
“Obviously, European countries intent to constitute game rules in favor of themselves to lift their international competitiveness to the United States and Japan,” Fujikura said.
“However, Japanese people’s traditional mentality is not to promise anything beyond capacity, because they fear that nobody would be held accountable for failing to meet the goals. They are used to lowering the goals as much as they can definitely achieve. So Japan is to propose the sectoral approach mechanism at the summit,” he added.
Fujikura said he personally believes that sectoral approach is a scientific and reasonable one, but different economic interests make it difficult for many other countries to support it.
“The sectoral approach fits Japan, but Europe, which is set to call for stricter digital goals, wants to establish a disadvantageous mechanism for Japan,” Fujikura said.
He said that developing countries, especially China and India, will not agree to have the sectoral mechanism as the basis for setting reduction targets.
“As China has been reiterating its engagement in energy saving but refusing other countries’ interference into its reduction targets setting process, all developing countries would like to conduct energy saving and GHG reduction according to their own steps. From this perspective, they will not accept the sectoral mechanism.”
Fujikura said he is not optimistic about the tangible progress of the summit. “There will hardly be substantial resolution since the United States and Europe will at the most express their understanding for Japan’s bill of sectoral approach.”
He predicted that discussions over mid-term reduction targets by the year 2020 is unlikely to lead to any consensus either.
“A G8 resolution needs unanimous ratification by all leaders, but the United States will absolutely make no such decision at least by the end of this year,” he said.
OVEROPTIMISM ABOUT TECHNOLOGY’S ROLE
Fujikura expressed his concern that people are overoptimistic about the role of technologies in tackling global warming.
He said that carbon dioxide is different from other pollution sources in that the emission of the gas cannot be avoided as long as there are human activities.
“It is true that technology plays an important role; it is, however, of greater significance that a system should be established to encourage voluntary reduction of the GHG emissions,” said Fujikura.
“The development of biofuel is one of the embodiments of the so-called ‘technological redundancy,'” he added.
The use of biofuel could surely help cut the emission of carbon dioxide, but in the process of producing the needed raw material such as corn, energy is consumed and carbon dioxide emitted in sowing, harvesting and transport, Fujikura said.
“The energy saved has almost been offset by that consumed, and the target of emission cut has thus not been met in effect,” he said.
“It is imperative that the society should not be built on private cars,” said the expert, who deems the exploitation of biofuel as a move in the wrong direction.
Fujikura said levying taxes on fuel and electricity will push up gasoline and electricity prices and make people more willingly turn off their air-conditioners and take public transport vehicles instead, which will help create such a society.
“The improved way of life is thus the fundamental measure to cut GHG emissions,” said Fujikura.
In 2004, Japan’s environment ministry proposed a bill to introduce an environment tax in 2005 and the move was vetoed by government departments and the economy ministry in particular. In the following two years, no similar bills were proposed.
“Japan is likely to take the summit as an opportunity to seek justifications for the introduction of the environment tax,” Fujikura said.
G8 FORUM NEEDS NEW BLOOD
Fujikura said the G8 forum needs new members to inject vitality.
“As far as the forum is concerned, the G8’s clout has been on the decline,” said Fujikura, citing the rise of emerging economies such as China and India.
Without the participation of such nations as China and India, the G8 forum is doomed to see its influence waning on international affairs, said Fujikura.
The G8 summit, a forum of the world’s richest countries, has been there since November 1975, when leaders of Britain, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and then West Germany gathered in France for their first economic summit.