Sunday, May 06, 2007

[ no Nippon the air ]

Japan donates to combat climate change

OKYO - Japan said Sunday it will provide $100 million to the Asian Development Bank to set up special funds aimed at combatting global climate change and promoting greener investment in the region.

The money is part of a new initiative rolled out by Tokyo to support sustainable development amid increasing concern that Asia's breakneck economic advances are leaving the environment in tatters. It comes just days after a breakthrough agreement in Thailand set the world's first roadmap for fighting global warming.

As part of Japan's push, it will also provide up to $2 billion in loans to the Asian Development Bank during the next five years to promote environmentally friendly investment in the region.

"Climate change is an imminent challenge," Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi, said while announcing the plan at the ADB's annual meeting in Kyoto. "Each country should recognize the issue as their own challenge."

Tackling environmental problems is emerging as a top priority at the ADB, which was chartered four decades ago to fight poverty through economic growth. The ADB is working to counter a mentality that poor nations must sacrifice the environment to the march of progress, amid criticism that the bank funds such rampant development.

During the last three decades, Asia's energy consumption has grown by 230 percent, and it is expected to double again by 2030, ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda said Sunday. The region already accounts for a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions — a leading cause of global warming.

Japan, which has the second-highest voting power in the ADB after the United States, will channel up to $100 million into two new funds — the Asian Clean Energy Fund and the Investment Climate Facilitation Fund.

The funds are envisioned as promoting renewable energy resources, such as solar power, and encouraging nations to build environmentally friendly infrastructure. They also aim to attract greener investment.

"I expect this initiative will help ensure sustainable development in the region," Omi said.

In Kyoto, some 3,000 delegates from the ADB's 67 member governments will debate plans to make the bank more responsive to environmental woes. The bank spends $1 billion a year on clean energy.

But activists assail the bank for continuing to fund coal projects, which are vilified as fanning global warming. The bank has no immediate plans to phase out funding coal, saying it's more economical for poor countries.

Organizers were hoping the ADB's environmental agenda gets a boost from the host city, Kyoto, where an international protocol to fight global warming was born 10 years ago.

On Friday in Bangkok, delegates from 120 countries approved the first blueprint for stemming greenhouse gas emissions, laying out what they said was an affordable arsenal of anti-warming measures that must be adopted.

The report, a summary of a study by a U.N. network of 2,000 scientists, said the world has to make significant cuts in gas emissions through increasing the energy efficiency of buildings and vehicles, shifting from fossil fuels to renewable fuels, and reforming both the forestry and farming sectors.