Page 1 of 2 Hatoyama sets global marker
By Iida Tetsunari and Andrew DeWit
The Nikkei Ecolomy, an ecology-oriented publication of Japan's business daily,
the Nikkei, on September 17 carried an article, "A 25% Cut is Both Possible and
Desirable", by Iida Tetsunari, head of the Institute for Sustainable Energy
Policies in Tokyo.
Iida is an important figure in global climate change policy, being a
contributor to the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, Renewable Energy
Policy Network for the 21st Century, the International Renewable Energy Agency,
and other major international bodies. He is also a central figure in domestic
policymaking networks, working on committees of the Ministry of Economy and
Industry and the Environment Ministry, advisory organs in Tokyo and Yokohama,
and as a policy advisor to key
Diet, or parliament, members.
His role is almost certain to be enhanced by Japan's recent "regime change"
election, since the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is eager to expand the
share of renewables in Japan's energy mix. The DPJ's policy commitments in the
environmental and energy fields are generally first-rank and in sharp contrast
to the weak and largely voluntary targets of the defeated LDP and its
collaborators in the bureaucracy and big business.
Iida reports that when Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio made his
September 7 post-election reaffirmation of the DPJ commitment to slash
greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2020 relative to 1990 level emissions, it was
at the Asahi World Environmental Forum 2009, held in Tokyo. This international
event featured talks by Hatoyama and Iida himself as well as such other
notables as Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change, and Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Hatoyama's commitment to robust emissions reductions is a repudiation of former
prime minister Aso Taro's much-ridiculed June 10 announcement of a 15% cut by
2020 (from 2005 emissions levels, or a mere 8% cut from 1990 levels).
Hatoyama's target became yet more formal on September 22 in New York, when he
repeated it to the UN's first formal meeting specifically devoted to climate
change.
The timing of Hatoyama's announcement was auspicious on a number of fronts.
First, his statement is the strongest and clearest policy commitment of the new
government. It is also a major break with prior policy that appears likely to
help reshape policymaking in general.
The DPJ seems ready to use energy and environmental policy to transform
policymaking institutions as well as relations between elected politicians and
some of the most powerful elements of the bureaucracy and business community,
forcing the latter to understand that they are under new political leadership
rather than facing yet another team of representatives with rubber-stamps in
hand.
At the international level, the attentive public's response has been ecstatic.
Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard, who is slated to chair the December
7-18 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, perhaps summed it up best when
she declared that "For a long time, everybody has been waiting for everybody
else to move ... the strong message from Japan is exactly what is needed."
Japan's new leadership is acting at an especially critical time for the global
community, as vested interests such as the coal lobby in the United States
threaten to leave that country and the world rudderless at a point where the
world desperately needs an effective post-Kyoto agreement.
Naturally, Japan's conservative business press has been wailing that the sky
will fall. As Iida notes, bureaucrats, business and their allies in academe as
well as the press opposed the DPJ targets during the election campaign,
predicting dire economic consequences.
It was in fact a rather bizarre show to watch, with the past several years in
mind. The Japanese press had largely given former prime minister Junichiro
Koizumi and other LDP regimes a pass on their often slavish cooperation with
the George W Bush Administration's agenda of climate change denial and
obstructing international agreement. Few remarked on Koizumi's spring 2001
readiness to toss the Kyoto Treaty if Washington so desired. Most of the
Japanese press also simply ignored the October 30, 2006, release of the Stern
Review (led by Sir Nicholas Stern, former World Bank chief economist) on the
economics of climate change and the global debate on costs that it engendered.
The party line, reflecting the militant patriotism of an LDP rotting from
within, was that Japan was the global leader in energy efficiency, renewables,
recycling, and virtually any other relevant field. But then in the spring of
2007, perhaps because the evidence simply became overwhelming, the Nikkei
turned away from its previous boosterism and started warning that Japan was
dangerously behind on climate change policymaking.
Japanese readers began to learn of German and other successes in growing their
green economy through feed-in tariffs, renewable portfolio standards, carbon
taxes, emissions trading and the other public policies that are scarce in Japan
but are reshaping other industrial economies (and this is now especially true
of China, the dark horse of solar and wind, and probably much else).
Some of the best coverage of climate change and renewable energy initiatives
started coming from the determinedly, and at times rabidly, right-wing Sankei
newspaper - although on the night the DPJ won the election a Sankei "tweet"
announced that the paper was going into "opposition" mode.
During the election campaign, most papers tacked back again, publicizing leaks
from Kasumigaseki (the "foggy bottom" of the Japanese bureaucracy) and
elsewhere, and ganged up on the DPJ's election promise of more aggressive
emissions targets. Iida concisely points out the inadequacies of the
disinformation that was deployed in this effort.
The central thrust of the disinformation was the claim that Japanese companies
had already invested hugely in efficiency and lower emissions and would thus be
unfairly penalized by higher targets. These claims were gross exaggerations and
distortions on several fronts. Japanese firms slowed their efficiency and other
clean investments in the 1990s as they fell into the long balance-sheet
recession and deleveraging that followed the land- and stock-price bubble.
Japan's energy efficiency, per-capita carbon emissions and other indices are
among the best in the big countries that belong to the 30-member Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development, but they are not keeping pace with
leaders such as Germany. And since the Japanese economy was growing so slowly
during the "lost decade" or "two lost decades" after 1990, with the population
flattening out and now shrinking, one has to wonder why all this alleged
business effort has not seen Japan easily achieve its relatively light
emissions targets under the Kyoto agreement.
Japan is required to cut 6% by 2012 over its 1990 emissions levels, but as Iida
points out, by 2007 Japan's emissions had grown by 9.2%.
Surely much of the problem is rooted in the LDP emphasis on making moral
suasion of the public the center of public policy, rather than adopting the
kinds of targets and rules for industry that made Japan an environmental leader
during the 1970s and 1980s. The business community was largely left to
voluntary programmes and self-regulation. The monopolistic utilities and heavy
emitters (steel, cement and the like) that dominate corporate Japan's peak
business associations, particularly Keidanren, largely controlled the LDP, and
thus virtually wrote this policy, need to understand that Detroit's dictation
of fuel-efficiency standards and related policies is perhaps the main reason
the US automotive sector is now a basket-case. Regulatory capture often simply
greases an industry's road to ruin, with compliant regulators and paid
politicians in hand.
Virtually none of the press let voters know that Germany and others have had
stunning successes in using public policy to cut their emissions and build
robust renewable sectors. And on the central point of emissions cuts, few saw
fit to point out that the European Union, in its entirety, stands ready to cut
emissions 20% by 2020 (relative to 1990 levels) and will increase that to 30%
if there is international cooperation. As long ago as June 2007, the German
Environment Minister announced that Germany was ready to boost that cut to 40%
by 2020. Indeed, Germany has already cut its emissions by about 21% relative to
1990 levels.
Contrast that with the inability of the United States to announce any real
emissions target before the critical Copenhagen meeting in December. With the
Barack Obama administration embroiled in the backlash from caving in to Wall
Street, the prospects for climate change leadership from the US look slim. The
timing could not be worse. If no deal is struck in 2009, the international
community may lose its best opportunity for a comprehensive agreement on
emissions cuts and how to incorporate new and massive emitters such as China
and India.
The DPJ's bold commitment not only reduces the number of powerful nations lined
up to engage in mere finger-pointing to excuse themselves from failure; it also
means that one of the world's most innovative manufacturing sectors now has the
political leadership that will be required to pioneer the technology necessary
to lead the green revolution.
Via Hatoyama's commitment to cut Japan's emissions 25% by 2020, and the
accompanying DPJ policies that make it achievable, Japan has turned from being
a laggard and a skeptic on climate change to being a leader. That bears
repeating: Japan has abruptly and officially shifted from being a country that
regularly received "fossil-fuel awards" at climate change meetings, due to its
stalling tactics in the face of our extraordinary collective challenge, and is
now a country from which much can be expected.
Why was Japan such a laggard in its approach to climate change? The key problem
was the strength of an institutionalized bureaucratic ideology. International
negotiations are the province of the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Economy
and Industry and the Ministry of the Environment.
But METI's dominance has been and - for the present - remains extraordinary. As
a result of METI's role, Japan's strategy in international negotiations that
deal with climate change has stressed a very narrow focus on national interest
as opposed to a wider effort at cooperating to create international norms. This
approach was, moreover, grounded in the particular interests of METI as well as
the vested interests of the industries it represents. This focus on emphasizing
narrow sectoral interests forfeited the opportunity to build a larger national
consensus around vigorous reduction of carbon emissions.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
