Welcome Address

Dr. Ichiro Kamoshita
Minister of the Environment, JapanGood morning. On behalf of the organizers, I would like to extend a cordial welcome and express
my appreciation to all of you who have taken time out of your busy schedules to attend thissymposium on the issues surrounding climate change.
The Japan-UK joint research project was initiated by the British and Japanese Ministers of theEnvironment two years ago this month. A later joint statement by the prime ministers of the twocountries positioned the project as a bilateral joint research initiative. Since then, a meeting has
been held in Tokyo (June 2006), another in London (June 2007), and this year marks the third such
event of this kind.
Last year we made good progress toward the development of a low carbon society. The first step
was marked by the publication of the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4). The report asserts that there is no doubtthat climate change is occurring, and discusses the likelihood that it is caused by human activity. In
addition, it states that the impact of climate change has been confirmed in almost all of theecosystems currently under observation and that the situation is worsening. Furthermore, it
maintains that if, in the next few decades, drastic measures are implemented that make use ofcurrently available technologies and those that are to be commercialized in the future, it would bepossible to limit the total emissions in 2030 to current levels. Therefore, the international
community must heed the alarms being sounded by scientists around the world and implement
policies and measures to stabilize climate change.
In December of last year, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP13) was held in Bali,Indonesia. The focus of the Bali meeting was to initiate a new framework beyond 2013 with theparticipation of the major CO2 emitting countries. In the past, developing countries have insisted
that industrialized countries take responsibility for the climate change issue, but the IPCC, tackling
the problem from the perspective of science, insists that the earth cannot be protected without theparticipation of the developing world. As a result, developing countries have also come to anagreement to reduce their emissions in the next generation of the framework. I was in attendance atthis meeting and I can state from experience that the negotiation process was long and difficult.
The meeting was extended for an extra day and in the last minutes of that day, an agreement was
finally reached that by 2009 a new framework would be created with the participation of major
emitting countries including the US, China, and India.
The international community has started building a “post-Kyoto” framework.

-In order for ourchildren and grandchildren to live safely on the earth for many years to come, we have to adopt along term perspective for the reduction of GHGs. Last year, Japan proposed its “Cool Earth 50”
initiative which calls for halving the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. At the World
Economic Forum in Davos this year, Prime Minister Fukuda put forth the Cool Earth initiative andstated that as a part of Japan’s involvement in the new framework, it plans to set national targets for
total emission reductions and strongly promote strategies to fight climate change. Climate change
will be one of the biggest topics of discussion at the G8 Summit to be held at Lake Toya in July. As
the host country, Japan is determined to lead discussions in the international community towards therealization of the Cool Earth 50 objectives.
In his policy statement speech, and during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, PrimeMinister Fukuda clearly stated that the low carbon society concept is to be the basic national policyfor Japan. Halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 cannot be achieved by simply continuing onin the same manner as we are today. In addition to technological innovation, we must revise ourproduction mechanisms, lifestyles, and transport and urban systems to achieve a fundamental shift inour social systems.
In the near future, Japan will become an aging society and the proportion of elderly people in thepopulation will be much higher than it used to be. Elderly people will find driving difficult andwill not be able to travel long distances to go shopping. They will have to be able to access medical
services and buy food within walking distance of their houses.
Compact and concise urban
planning will be imperative to progress in this regard. The “community within walking distance”
concept can be used as an example of one effort towards achieving a low carbon society. In thisway, the joint Japan-UK project aims to show the international community what is meant by “lowcarbon society” and how such a society can be realized.
At today’s symposium, we will hear from developing countries, businesses, and the UK government,
all of whom who are working towards the realization of a low carbon society. We will also hear areport from the expert meeting which was held over the past two days and which was attended byabout eighty experts from 22 countries including developed, emerging, and developing countries
such as China, India, and Thailand. Researchers and representatives from governmental andinternational organizations participated in this meeting to discuss sustainable development andinvestment barriers and opportunities related to climate change. They have come up with concretemeasures to be implemented, and they will be presenting them to us this afternoon.
We have only just taken the first steps towards a low carbon society in the long journey towards
2050. I hope that this symposium will give us a roadmap to follow into the future. Thank youvery much.

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