KAZE, October 2019
Four years after the Paris Agreement
Saburo KATO
The landmark Paris Agreement, adopted on 12 December 2015, is the firstlegally-binding framework regulating all Parties related to climate change issues. It urges
all humankind to take prompt actions to avoid a serious climate crisis. This is innovative inthat the international community finally agreed to decarbonize itself and make a historictransformation of the current social and economic systems by mainstreaming renewableenergy.
Looking back, it is admirable that all parties agreed on this severe agreement at
COP21 in Paris. The international community was probably forced to coordinate theirefforts to tackle climate-change-induced extreme weather events taking place in various
parts of the world.
Now, after four years of the adoption of the Paris Agreement, I would like to review
changes and developments, both positive and negative, taking place during this period.
1. Seesaw struggle
Of various changes happened in the past four years, one important positive
development would be the increase in the number of countries that ratified the ParisAgreement. It is amazing that the vast majority of 187 out of 193 UN member states
ratified the agreement!
The second positive development is that the IPCC’s special report on 1.5 degrees
was publicized in October 2018, which clearly showed us the way toward thedecarbonized society. The report says that we need to reduce CO2 emission by 45% from2010 level, otherwise the temperature will increase by 1.5 degrees in 10 years.
To achieve the 45% reduction, the report states that “Pathways limiting global
warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot would require rapid and far-reachingtransitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings),
and industrial systems (high confidence). These systems transitions are unprecedented interms of scale, but not necessarily in terms of speed, and imply deep emissions reductions
in all sectors, a wide portfolio of mitigation options and a significant upscaling ofinvestments in those options (medium confidence).”
In the meantime, business enterprises, citizens’ groups as well as media all over
the world started to take serious actions to tackle climate change. Moreover, politicalleaders of major countries, including President Macron of France, are emphasizing theimportance of policy measures to address climate change issues. It is also noteworthy

that green parties are making a big leap in elections and/or opinion polls in EU countries.
In addition to the above, what probably is most important would be a series ofmovements that could be called “Greta’s effect”. At the age of 15, Ms. Greta Thunberg
from Sweden started a “school strike for climate” alone in August 2018 to call for stronger
actions on global warming. Her action sent ripples through the young people of all over
the world and created a big wave of youth’s climate activities which reached even theshore of Japan.
On the other hand, regrettably, the Trump administration’s withdrawal from theParis Agreement on 1 June 2017 would come the first one on the list of negative changes.
Until now he has kept an extremely negative attitude toward the agreement while various
positive movements are going on in this country by many local governments, citizen
groups, and scientists.
President Bolsonaro of Brazil, taking the office in January 2019, is another leader
who is negative in tackling climate changes. He is also criticized for his attitude toward theAmazon rainforest wildfires this year, but he does not change his negative attitude toward
climate issues.
As it is, the global GHG emission has been increasing despite the Paris Agreement,
and so is the level of CO2, resulting in extreme weather various parts of the world
becoming more serious year by year.

It is reported that the UN Secretary-General

Antonio Gutteres told that “Clearly, we are lagging behind” in the combat of globalwarming.
Also, in Japan, we see extreme weather events every summer, and damages of
those heavy rainfalls and storms cost not only human lives but also caused tremendous
economic and financial loss.
So far, national/local governments, as well as individual people, have been able towithstand those damages, but if big natural disasters occur every year anywhere on theJapanese archipelago, it will be a fatal blow to the aging Japanese society with low
economic growth.
Prime Minister Abe repeatedly states that the major role of the national
government is to protect the lives, assets and daily life of its nationals. However, we insist
that the government should protect not only military security but also the security of life
against climate crises. So far, the Abe administration has not introduced such important
policy measures as carbon-emission tax or emission trading to reduce our dependence on
fossil fuels. He even defends coal-fired power generation probably under the pressure
from energy-intensive industries.
2. A ray of hope for the future
The Paris Agreement requires an unprecedented level of social transformationand therefore the global community is now in the midst of a big sway. Amid social
confusions all over the world, however, there seem to be a few signs of hope for the future.

I said so because a growing number of local governments, companies, and media arebecoming serious about the climate crisis, and secondly even in Japan young people,
although very few, join Greta’s movement and are standing up against climate crisis. The
third reason is that the current Japanese political situation under the Abe administration
generated a young Minister of Environment. The 38 years’ old Environment Minister
Shinjiro KOIZUMI, second son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, is expected tobring a new perspective to the backward attitude of the government of Japan. Of course,
what he could do as a Minister is still unknown, but I felt some sort of positive differencein Minister Koizumi’s words and deeds from the past environment ministers. He said, “Ithought that the role of the Ministry of Environment is to protect the natural environment,
but I was wrong. The ministry administers issues of SDGs, meaning it deals with socialtransformation. The common language among global top-leaders is SDGs and Climate
Change, but in Japan, they are not necessarily paid enough attention. I would like to fill
the gaps between Japan and the world.”
With a hope for the future, I will watch his performance as a Minister ofEnvironment if he will have a real leadership to enhance government policy and propel
Japan up to the global frontline in tackling climate changes.