NGOs criticize the archipelago for massively funding projects with fossil fuels and for promoting expensive technologies with questionable effects on the environment.
by Philippe Mesmer (Tokyo, Correspondence)
At COP27, Japan is absent subscribers. Admittedly, his Minister of the Environment, Akihiro Nishimura, was to arrive on Saturday November 12 in Charm El -Cheikh (Egypt) after a flight on the “Green Jet” of the Ana Company – a Boeing 787 covered with a “skin of Shark “improving air circulation, which reduces kerosene consumption. The archipelago also has a stand where it promises “solutions for the world”. But his Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, did not make the trip. The head of government “wanted to come but could not” due to a parliamentary agenda charged, it is said in Tokyo.
This absence of disinterest explains the attribution in Japan on November 9 of a “fossil of the day”. This “price” is awarded by the Climate Action Network (CAN) movement to countries “which do the maximum to do the minimum”. “The Japanese government is making enormous efforts to export false solutions,” said CAN, among others by promoting coal electric power plants and investments in fossil fuels.
Fifth World Serre Gase Gase Emitter, the archipelago is described as “greenwashing wonder” by the NGO Oil Change International (OCI), because it remains an important public financier of fossil fuels: 10.6 billion Dollars a year on average from 2019 to 2021. It also massively finances gas projects, in Mozambique, the Philippines or even in Australia and Russia, which, according to OIC, threaten the biodiversity and the livelihoods of local communities. “Japanese funding increases the dependence of countries benefiting from fossil fuels, aggravating climate and energy crises and destroying the livelihoods of populations,” condemns Ayumi Fukakusa, the Japanese branch of the NGO Friends of the Earth.
ambiguities
The criticisms emitted are not new. Japan has already obtained “fossils of the day” at COP25 and 26, for its funding of fossil fuels and its carbon attachment.
These criticism highlights the ambiguities of a country where greenhouse gas emissions dropped over a year of 5.1 % in the year ended at the end of March 2021, to set up at 1,150 million Tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt Éq. CO2). An evolution without real efforts because, specifies the Ministry of the Environment, “the main factor is the decrease in energy consumption due to the reduction of production and the reduction of passenger and goods” during the pandemic of COVID-19. The decline also stems from demographic decline.
You have 38.36% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.