The "Power Elite" and Environmental-Energy Policy in Japan

On December 10, 2010, near the close of the COP 16 meeting in Cancun, Mexico, the international press reported that 20 national leaders, including those of the UK and Mexico, were lined up to call Japanese Prime Minister Kan Naoto. They sought to persuade Kan and his government not to abandon the 2008 to 2012 Kyoto Protocol approach to securing carbon reductions via explicit and compulsory targets. Their concern was well grounded. Arima Jun, the Deputy Director General for Environmental Affairs at Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, shocked the Cancun conference on December 2 with his declaration that "Japan will not inscribe its target under the Kyoto Protocol on any conditions or under any circumstances."Arima's blunt bureaucratese meant that Japan would not agree to an extension of the Protocol. Observers were so taken aback by the announcement that they assumed it must be a negotiating ploy. Surely Japan, a shrinking presence on the international stage and desperate to pump up its soft power, would not junk a treaty that earned the country valuable "global brand recognition" with each iteration of "Kyoto." Yet Arima's announcement was confirmed the next day by a decision of the Japanese cabinet.In the event, the Cancun conference decided to table decisions on whether to extend the Kyoto process to the December 2011 COP meeting in Durban, South Africa. But the Japanese Government's determination to abandon Kyoto, the world's only carbon-reduction agreement, remains of deep concern. It is also a serious transgression of Japan's commitment, via the 2007 Bali Roadmap, to a two-track process of keeping Kyoto while also bringing in the US, China and other countries not yet committed to carbon cuts. Abandoning Kyoto was an unimaginable position for Kan's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) Government to take barely more than a year after the country's "regime change" election of August 30, 2009. In the election campaign and after taking office, the DPJ had stressed that energy and environmental targets were key elements of green economic growth.