Climate Change
G20 Climate Sustainability Working Group (CSWG): 1st Meeting 2019
March 5, 2019
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs held the first meeting of the 2019 G20 Climate Sustainability Working Group (CSWG) from February 14 to 16, 2019 at the Tokyo Conference Center Ariake. More than 100 including G20 and International Organizations' representatives participated in the meeting and engaged in active discussion on various subjects related to climate change.
1. Overview of the Meeting
- Date and times:
- 09:00 - 17:30 JST on February 14, 15 and 16, 2019 (- 17:30 for the last day)
- Venue:
- Tokyo Conference Center (Ariake Central Tower 3rd & 4th Floor, 3-7-18 Ariake, Koto-ku Tokyo 135-0063, Japan)
- Participants:
- Representatives of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America, European Union, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank, etc. (more than 100 for total)
- Working language:
- English
- Agenda:
- Presentation materials of Session 6,7 and 8 are available.
- February 14
- Opening Session (the opening remarks from State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr Toshiko Abe (PDF)
) - Session 1: Effective Implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Design of Long-Term Strategies
- Session 2: Cooperating with Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to further enhance climate actions
- Session 3: Providing Wider Opportunities for Climate-related Investment
- February 15
- Session 4: Adaptation and Resilient Infrastructure
- Session 4-1: Increasing Resilience against Climate Change
- Session 4-2: Sharing Best Practices in Promoting Adaptation Measures
- Session 5: Implementation of Adaptation Measures and Sustainable Development
- Session 6: The Role of Renewable Energy in Addressing Climate Change (IEA (PDF)) (BloombergNEF (PDF)) (The Climate Group (PDF))
- February 16
- Session 7: Finding New Solution through Building Smart Cities (The World Bank (PDF)) (UNHABITAT (PDF)) (Daiwa House Industry (PDF))
- Session 8: Enhancing Partnership with Non State Actors (C20 (PDF)) (T20 (PDF)) (Japan Climate Initiative (PDF))
- Closing Session
2. Background and the Summary of the Meeting
- (1) Japan will host a G20 Summit in June 2019 for the first time (G20 Osaka Summit). Japan, as the presidency is preparing for the G20 Osaka Summit and Ministerial Meetings. Noting that the Paris Agreement, the post-2020 framework, is about to start, Japan hopes to find convergence on climate-change-related discussion among G20 toward the Summit through CSWG meetings.
- (2) The invited International Organizations and other representatives shared their knowledge and experience. Based on the input, the G20 representative discussed various issues in each Session. The Opening and Closing Sessions and the Sessions 6, 7 and 8 were open for the public and they also joined the discussion.
- (3) Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Norikazu Suzuki, made a speech (PDF) during the dinner reception of the meeting. In his speech, Mr Suzuki welcomed the participants and introduced Japan's climate change countermeasure activities which related to the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020. The meeting attendees also visited the Tokyo Skytree as the excursion and learned its energy-saving and other climate change countermeasure efforts. The meeting was a good opportunity to show the advanced climate change measures in Tokyo to the G20 representatives.
- [note] G20 Climate Sustainability Working Group (CSWG)
- In the G20 framework, the Energy Sustainability Working Group (ESWG) was established in 2013 to cover the all energy-related issues. In 2017, considering that energy policy and climate change issues are closely linked each other, the Climate Sustainability Working Group (CSWG) was newly established under the Sustainability Working Group (SWG). In 2018, under the Argentine presidency, CSWG was separated from ESWG and became one of the Working Groups in the Sherpa process.
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