Climate change could end Japan’s dalliance with Africa

By Henry Neondo

Japan’s relationship with Africa appear headed for stormy periods following Africa’s rejection of the move by Japan to exclude climate change from its preparatory discussions in the build up to the fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development set for next year. 

During the fourth high-level ministerial and Senior Officers preparatory meeting held in Morocco in May, Japan’s strategy for low-carbon growth as a way of addressing climate change was rejected by Africans who felt that the proposal does not meet the continent’s position on climate change negotiations. 

This rejection led to Japan’s move to drop climate change on her development discussions with Africa in the next fifth high-level ministerial meeting set later this month in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso. 

The agenda forwarded to participants showed that Japan will be discussing health, rural development and peace and conspicuously left out environment and climate change. In a rejoinder, the climate change activists from Africa say “there can be no development in Africa without factoring in climate change.”  “To our surprise, Japan’s agenda for the next ministerial meeting to be held in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso in November did not include climate change,” said ZenabouSegda, a member of civil society organization in Burkina Faso that has been a regular attendee to these meetings. 

The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance in protest has asked African civil society participants to boycott all future discussions with Japan on TICAD if it continues to exclude environment and climate change from its African agenda, a move supported by Japanese civil society counterparts.

TICAD was launched in 1993 to promote high-level policy dialogue between African leaders and development partners.

A number of civil society organisations based in Japan interviewed say TICAD should be a mutually-beneficial relationship between Japan and African countries. 

According to Masaki Inaba, Program Director for Global Health, Africa Japan Forum, the country’s current policy on climate change is “disastrous”. 

Inaba said while the former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and several strong politicians of new ruling party Democratic Party of Japan tried to make a bold move against climate change to reduce carbon dioxide by 25% by 2020.

But the failure at the Copenhagen, strong pressure from the US government and strong opposition from the Japanese business community led Japan to develop cold feet. 

Inaba said the US became angry against DPJ's diplomatic policy to decrease US influence in Japan. In turn, said Inaba, the US began taking a series of tactics to weaken DPJ's new government through diverse ways. 

As a result DPJ government became weak, lost support from the media and public, and turned into the traditional diplomatic policy of post-war Japan pushing climate change in the back banner.  

Inaba added that the disaster of the Great East-Japan Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima nuclear plant accident that left 20,000 people dead and tens of thousands others displaced also had a role to play in Japan’s weakened stance against climate change.  

“It is sad that under flimsy grounds, Japanese officials decided to drop climate change as a key focus area. This is not surprising since Japan has played an obstructionist role in any progress in international climate change dialogue processes,” said an official from the Global Call to Action against Poverty, Japan.

The official noted that Africa suffers greatly from climate change impact, and there is no discussion in the continent which can ignore the role climate change will have in any development effort, may it be international or bilateral.

As part of Global Week of Action on Climate Justice, civil society organizations in Burkina Faso plan to stage a protest March during the TICAD’s Senior Officers meeting in Ouagadougou, to be held on 13 – 14 November 2012.

PACJA West African representative ZenabouSegda, who is also the Executive Director of Women Environment Development Programme said urged the local organisations to come out in big numbers to demonstrate to Japanese officials that climate change is a livelihood issues in Africa.

“This is time to demonstrate to Japan that Africa cannot grow without mainstreaming climate change”, she said, warning that unless TICAD wakes to this call, there should be no reason to pretend that they are assisting Africa.