Govt decides to reject Kyoto Protocol extension (Govt of Japan)

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The Yomiuri Shimbun

The government decided Friday not to agree to simply extend the Kyoto Protocol at the ongoing U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen, government sources said.

The decision was made at a meeting of Cabinet ministers involved with global warming, one day before unofficial ministerial-level talks begin Saturday at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP15).

China and some other countries are calling for an extension of the 1997 Kyoto agreement instead of creating a new framework to replace it. The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 percent from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.

The government did not reveal details concerning the decisions made at the Friday meeting, saying that would influence the ongoing negotiations. However, the ministers involved are believed to also have agreed on the following points:

-- The world should share the goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions globally and cutting emissions by 80 percent among industrialized countries by 2050.

-- A new framework in which developing countries also participate should be built.

-- An agreement by all major greenhouse gas emitters to pursue ambitious reduction goals is a prerequisite for Japan's proposed target of reducing its emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

-- The COP16 meeting scheduled for next year will be the deadline for negotiations to agree on a new framework.

"It would be meaningless to extend the Kyoto Protocol, which doesn't place any reduction obligations on the United States or China ," Environment Minister Sakihito Ozawa said at a press conference after the meeting.

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1. Energy use per capita in Japan is about half that of the United States