JAPANESE PROTOCOL PROPOSAL THREATENS KYOTO NEGOTIATIONS

Tokyo/Amsterdam, 6 October 1997

Greenpeace today described the emission proposals tabled today by the Government of Japan for the Kyoto Climate Conference as "ridiculously weak". The Japanese proposal would delay real action on the world's greatest environmental threat by ten years. Based on the formula in the proposal Japan itself would have to make scarcely a 2,5 % reduction by 2010.

"This proposal is an international disgrace. If the Japanese Government can not produce a stronger position, the right of Japan to host the Climate Summit in Kyoto in December has to be questioned" said Bill Hare, Climate Policy Director of Greenpeace International.

The Japanese proposal is for a tiny maximum target of a 5% emission reduction by 2010 in three greenhouse gases (CO2, methane an nitrous oxide). This target is not legally binding and would not have to be met by the majority of countries, including Japan.

The only legally binding emission control appears to be stabilisation of emissions by the year 2010. Hare called the proposal "a serious threat for the Kyoto negotiations and certainly not worthy a host country of the Climate Summit".

Japan's proposal does not even amount to half of the EU reduction target of 15% reduction by 2010 and does not name any target for the year 2005. The proposal effectively allows an increase in emissions by the year 2005 and creates loopholes which allows countries to evade even the tiny targets proposed.

Greenpeace criticised the Japanese Government for kowtowing to its all-powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry and to its heavy industrial companies. "Japan again puts the interests of some of its industry ahead of that of the global environment" said Hare, renewing the Greenpeace demand of a 20 per cent reduction of CO 2 emissions by the year 2005 based on 1990 emission levels

For further information call:

Yasuko Matsumoto, Greenpeace Japan + 81 3 53 51 54 09

Greenpeace International, Martina Krueger on + 31 20 5236 203

Holger Roenitz, Greenpeace press desk on +31 20 5249 545

notes to the editor:

The Japanese proposal in brief

• 1. Does not specify that targets should be legally binding.
• 2. Does not include a 2005 target - emission budget starts in 2008.
• 3. Does not have "significant" emissions reduction target for all industrialized countries. The proposal does not even produce a 5% reduction for all industrialized countries in 2010.
• 4. Does not include Hydrofluorocarbons. Japan has caved into pressure from the same chemical industry that created the ozone hole and which resisted controls on chlorofluorocarbons.
• 5. Envisages emissions borrowing which would undermine the climate convention and the Kyoto protocol.
• 6. Uses a differentiation formula that has something for everyone but Japan still does very little i.e. around 2% reduction in 2010. Allows most countries to make lower reductions than 5%.
• 7. Does not envisage further emission reductions beyond 2010.
• 8. Allows emission trading for a very small emission reduction, which opens the way for paper trading with the Russian Federation and othercountries of the former Soviet Union, whose emissions are anticipated to remain substantially below 1990 levels into the next century.