Japan official suggests 2005 as emissions cut base
TOKYO (AFP) — A senior Japanese official said Monday that 2005 would be fair for a base year in a new deal on slashing greenhouse gases, suggesting the Kyoto Protocol was slanted towards the European position.
The unusually blunt remarks come a week before the latest round of negotiations start in Bangkok on drafting a successor to Kyoto, the landmark treaty on fighting global warming.
The Kyoto Protocol requires major developed nations to slash emissions blamed for global warming by an average of five percent from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.
"Comparisons with 1990 levels are extremely unfair. That is the Japanese government's stance," Takao Kitabata, vice trade minister, told a news conference.
Asked which year would be fairer, 1990 or 2005, Kitabata said: "We believe that setting 2005 as the base year would be more satisfactory."
Japan has championed the Kyoto Protocol, named after its ancient capital, but is well behind in meeting its own goals as the world's second largest economy picks up steam from recession in the 1990s.
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda told the World Economic Forum in Davos in January that Japan wanted to review the base year for emissions cut but did not state a preference.
Like the United States, the main opponent of Kyoto, Japan has been hesitant in ongoing negotiations about EU-led calls for further binding cuts in emissions from 1990 levels.
Kitabata noted that in 1990, sizable parts of what is now the European Union was in the Soviet bloc.
"Japan has been pursuing energy efficiency during the oil crises, long before the fall of the Berlin Wall," he said, arguing that Tokyo has less room to make further cuts.
At the time the 1997 Kyoto accord was being negotiated, "Japan had to accept disadvantageous conditions for diplomatic reasons," he said.
The year 1990 was also before the privatisation of Britain's coal sector, which led Europe's second largest economy to switch rapidly to natural gas.
The European Union has set a self-binding target of cutting the bloc's overall greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020, compared with 1990 levels.
