外務省国際社会協力部 森元審議官冒頭挨拶
平成15年2月5日
First of all, I would like to extend my deep gratitude to all of you who have come all the way to "the Seminar on Joint Implementation" as a part of "The Study Tour organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan". To be honest, I am very impressed that we have had such a big response from private companies many of which took part in this seminar. A lot of Japanese business people seem to be interested in this seminar, seeking a window of opportunity.
I would also like to express my appreciation to my colleagues from Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industries, which has provided the facilities for this conference, and Ministry of the Environment, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport for their cooperation.
A number of countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. It will enter into force only by the ratification by the Russian Federation. When the Prime Minister Koizumi paid an official visit to Russia last month, both leaders signed the Japan-Russia Action Plan, which articulates "The Russian side will advance the preparatory process towards ratification of the Kyoto Protocol", which is quite encouraging. Japan continues to urge other countries to ratify the Kyoto Protocol expeditiously and to do its utmost to establish a common rule, in which all countries including the United States and developing countries participate, for taking international actions to combat global warming.
As was agreed in the eighth session of the Conference of the Parties in Delhi last November, "Parties should promote informal exchange of information on actions relating to mitigation and adaptation to assist Parties to continue to develop effective and appropriate responses to climate change." This is what we agreed. In this respect, Japan hosted an informal meeting in Tokyo last July inviting major countries including developing countries and discussed with them how the future commitment should be. Japan intends to follow up this meeting this year.
While the expectation in the international society for entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol has been growing, the preparatory work for the implementation of the Kyoto Mechanisms including Joint Implementation (JI) has been accelerated. The Japanese Government approved two Kyoto Mechanism projects proposed by Japanese private companies, one of which is a JI project with Kazakhstan and the other is a CDM project with Brazil. Japan considers it important to utilize the Kyoto Mechanisms and it is expected that the number of Kyoto Mechanism projects will increase in the future.
We have now officials here from Central and Eastern European countries, which are also experts in JI. These countries have great potentiality as a JI partner for Japan.
I strongly hope that there will be a fruitful exchange of information and opinions at today's meeting, and this meeting contributes to activating further discussions and facilitating project formulations that are beneficial to both Japan and Central and Eastern European countries.
Thank you for your attention.
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