Hatoyama sets global marker

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.

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.

Asia Times