Japan opposes plans to list the Atlantic bluefin tuna, which is highly prized in sushi and sashimi, as a most-endangered species and to ban its international trade, an official said on Monday.

The UN-backed wildlife trade agency supports a call to stop cross-border trade in the fish when 175 member nations to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meet next month in Doha, Qatar.

Marine wildlife experts say that, despite fishing quotas, bluefin tuna stocks have plunged by 80 percent in recent decades in the Western Atlantic and Mediterranean, threatening the predator species with extinction.

Japan will not join in any agreement to ban international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna under the United Nations treaty on endangered species, the country’s top fisheries negotiator said.

The negotiator, Masanori Miyahara, said in a telephone interview this week that Japan “would have no choice but to take a reservation” — in effect, to ignore the ban and leave its market open to continued imports — if the bluefin tuna were granted most-endangered species status.

“It’s a pity,” he said, “but it’s a matter of principle.”

Read the rest of the story: NYTIMES and AFP

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Seeking to turn an environmental problem into an economic opportunity, high-tech companies in resource-poor Japan are mining mountains of toxic e-waste for precious materials.

One model project, the sprawling Panasonic Eco Technology Center, sits in lush rice fields an hour’s drive outside of Osaka city.

Inside, workers and humming machines disassemble flat-panel televisions, refrigerators and air conditioners, sorting their metal and plastic components into boxes for recycling.

About 90 percent of dismantled parts are reused in one way or another, says Yutaka Maehara, a manager at the plant.

Among the most precious parts are metals such as copper that are becoming more expensive on the world market, while the plant also isolates toxic components such as heavy metals and dangerous gases.

The plant aims to leave a minimal environmental footprint and to be a good neighbour in its quaint rural setting.

“In the beginning residents here had some concerns,” said Panasonic spokeswoman Kyoko Ishii. “But as you see, we’ve been operating the plant without polluting the water and the rice is growing without problems.”

Japan has come a long way since the 1950s, 60s and 70s when it emerged at breakneck speed as Asia’s economic engine room, boosting living standards but often at a devastating environmental cost.

The skies over Tokyo, Yokohama and other industrial centres then were often choked with pollution, in the way those over parts of China are today, while waterways darkened with industrial effluent.

Since then Japan has tightened many emission standards and other safeguards and launched in 2001 a recycling system that separates paper, glass and aluminium cans from household rubbish that can be incinerated.

Today people who want to dispose of electronic appliances have to pay an average of 28 dollars for a washing machine, 32 dollars for a TV set and 54 dollars for a fridge, according to the industry ministry.

The volume of garbage dumped in landfills every year has shrunk to roughly one third of 1990 levels.

Used mobile phone handsets and digital cameras are now often called ‘city mines’ for the precious metals they contain, such as gold, silver and copper.

The government recently launched a campaign to encourage cellphone users to return their old handsets to mobile phone companies for recycling.

One pioneer in Japan has been camera maker Canon, which started recycling toner cartridges from its printers about 20 years ago and now reuses 90 percent of the components of its photocopiers.

“Our system is closed loop recycling, which means used parts from our products are used again in our products,” said Tomonori Iwashita, the executive officer in charge of Canon’s environmental policy.

“Because we are a corporate entity, we don’t make recycling efforts unless it is useful for our business. If you can recycle cheaply and reduce the burden on the environment then that’s good for your business too.”

But despite manufacturers’ efforts to go green, some disposal companies still dump dangerous materials, said Tetsuya Sekiguchi, an activist who has joined several residents’ lawsuits against waste landfills.

“I’ve been working on the problems of garbage pollution for decades, but the situation of illegal dumping has not improved a bit as there are few conscientious recycling companies,” he said.

Another challenge is “the impact of economic globalisation on the recycling industry,” said Yuichi Moriguchi, head of the waste and recycling research centre at the National Institute for Environmental Studies.

“Asian countries, led by China, are absorbing Japanese waste materials and thereby causing a shortage of materials for the Japanese recycling industry” which has the most sophisticated technologies, Moriguchi said.

Because of very basic and dangerous extraction methods — for example by burning the plastic off metal parts in the open — waste from Japan often causes health and environmental problems in other Asian countries, he said.

“We need to build an international system of recycling” so that Japan’s technologies can be fully utilised, Moriguchi said.

In the long term, he said, “it’s important to seek materials made from sustainable resources, such as plants, with less energy and less pollution … because relying on limited resources such as petroleum will bring trouble in the future”.

Canon and synthetic fibre maker Toray Industries Inc. have jointly developed a high quality plastic made from corn, which has been used in keyboards and components of its office machines.

“Even though it is made from corn, its fire resistance is about the same as that of conventional plastic,” Iwashita said.

To expand research into sustainable materials, he said, Canon needs other companies, including major materials manufacturers, to come on board.

“We can’t do it alone,” he said. “We have to work as a wider group.”

Source: AP

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Japan said Wednesday it would offer 1.75 trillion yen (19.5 billion dollars) to developing nations under a climate deal, offering a major boost to the summit in Copenhagen.

The figure amounts to more than half of the money as part of a plan to assist developing nations, a key sticking point at the 194-nation conference in the Danish capital.

“Japan as a country takes very seriously its responsibility in the international community,” Environment Minister Sakihito Ozawa told reporters.

“Japan has decided today that we will provide financial assistance to developing nations of approximately 1.75 trillion yen including public and private finances,” he said.

Ozawa said that Japan was making the pledge “all on the premise that a fair and effective international framework should be built and that this framework should involve all major countries.”

He said that 1.3 trillion yen would come in public funds, with the rest consisting of private money in the world’s second largest economy.

Ozawa gave the dollar figure of 15 billion for the pledge, although it comes to 19.5 billion with the current strength of the Japanese currency against the greenback.

It marks the biggest contribution yet to the so-called fast-track fund aimed at helping developing nations cope with climate change through 2012.

It tops the pledge by European leaders to provide 7.2 billion euros (10.6 billion dollars). The United States has said it is ready to pay a “fair share” but President Barack Obama has not yet announced any figure.

Ozawa said the funding would include mitigation efforts and the development of low-carbon technology, along with adaption by small island states.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s left-leaning government has ramped up pledges by Japan to battle global warming and to find a successor to the landmark Kyoto Protocol negotiated in the Asian power’s ancient capital.

Japan earlier said it would also take part in a six-nation, 3.5 billion-dollar fund to address deforestation, a major source of climate change.

Photo by Greenpeace Finland

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Toyota Motor Corp. unveiled on Monday the plug-in version of the latest Prius gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle with extended range when it runs on electricity.

Takeshi Uchiyamada, executive vice president at Toyota Motor Corp., shows the plug-in version of the Prius hybrid during its unveiling Monday. YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO

Toyota plans to lease out 600 of the plug-in hybrids to governments and corporations in Japan, the United States and Europe and gain feedback.

It says it will start selling the plug-in hybrid at home and abroad in two years.

The five-seater has a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine and an electric motor. Increased capacity of the lithium-ion batteries gives it a longer electric-motor-only cruising range. Its plug also allows users to charge the batteries using household electricity.

“A plug-in hybrid vehicle eases concerns about electric vehicles because it includes the hybrid system,” said Takeshi Uchiyamada, executive vice president at Toyota.

The Prius Plug-in Hybrid has a cruising range using only electricity of 23.5 km under Japanese standards. Its fuel-efficiency in hybrid mode is 57 km per liter, the carmaker said.

By using a 100-volt socket, it takes three hours to fully charge the battery. With a 200-volt socket, it takes 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Toyota will lease 230 of the vehicles domestically to local governments, ministries and companies, including electric power utilities.

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Japan needs to step up and take a more prominent and visible leadership role at the U.N. climate talks or the conference could end in failure, Japanese and foreign nongovernmental organizations said Thursday.

The Copenhagen conference is supposed to forge a deal on greenhouse gas emissions after the first period of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

With developed and developing countries still divided and a growing split within developing countries over some issues threatening a successful outcome at the conference, calls for the country where the protocol was forged to do more are growing.

“Talks in Copenhagen are on the verge of collapse, with negotiations suspended for several hours Wednesday as developed and developing countries clashed,” the environmental NGO Avaaz.org said.

“Next week, Japan has the opportunity to break the deadlock by announcing an ambitious Hatoyama Initiative and fulfilling its obligation to provide developing countries with sufficient climate finance.”

With developing nations asking for hundreds of billions of dollars in aid guarantees for climate change mitigation and adaptation, developed countries like Japan are feeling pressure to go well beyond financial pledges of $10 billion annually from 2010 to 2012, which are currently being discussed.

Read more of this story: Japan under fire for laying low in Copenhagen

More Information:
COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009

Source: Japan Times

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Japanese researchers said on Thursday they had found a way to make plant leaves absorb more carbon dioxide in an innovation that may one day help ease global warming and boost food production.

The Kyoto University team found that soaking germinated seeds in a protein solution raised the number of pores, or stomas, on the leaves that inhale CO2 and release oxygen, said chief researcher Ikuko Hara-Nishimura.

“A larger number means there are more intake windows for carbon dioxide, contributing to lowering the density of the gas,” she told AFP by telephone.

Another effect is higher starch production in photosynthesis, the process in which green plants use CO2 and water to produce sugar and other organic compounds.

“It could lead to higher production of food and materials for biofuel,” said Hara-Nishimura, a biology professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School in western Japan.

In the experiments, the team used budding leaves of thale cress, a plant formally called Arabidopsis, which has a short life span of two months and is widely used as a model plant in biology.

They found that the number of pores multiplied relative to the concentration of the solution of the protein, which the researchers named Stomagen, achieving a maximum of four times the number of pores of an untreated plant.

An ideal increase would be two-to-three times, as too many pores impede the functions of other cells in the surface of the plant, Hara-Nishimura said.

Stomagen is easy but costly to produce chemically, and the team is working on a cheaper way to make it, Hara-Nishimura said, adding that an alternative may be to genetically modify plants to have more pores.

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Japan’s envoy to climate change talks expressed doubt Wednesday that a final agreement would be reached at the UN summit on tackling global warming that starts next week in Copenhagen.

“Due to time constraints … we would have to say it will be difficult to agree on a legally binding text” at the December 7-18 meeting, said Environment Minister Sakihito Ozawa.

However, he expressed hope that a non-binding political agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions can be signed by 192 nations there that would pave the way for a final text.

Such a political agreement should include the reduction targets of industrialized countries, mitigation actions by developing countries, pledges of financial aid, and a deadline for a legally binding text, he said.

“The negotiations will be complex, with a high degree of difficulty, but I believe it is possible to achieve a historical politically binding agreement,” he told reporters.

The center-left government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has promised to slash emissions by 25 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, as long as major emitters such as the United States and China also take meaningful action.

Japan, where the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, has so far struggled to meet its own previous target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by six percent between 1990 and the 2008-2012 period.

Tokyo has also pledged 9.2 billion dollars in aid to developing countries by 2012 to help them combat global warming.

More Information:
COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009

Source: AFP

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Engineers test eco-friendly light emitting diodes (LED) in a 113-year-old lighthouse in Yokohama Port, south of Tokyo, on Nov. 19, 2009. The Japan Coast Guard switched the lighthouse to LED with a solar power generating device from incandescent lighting.

Source and Photo: Kyodo

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A blood-orange blob the size of a small refrigerator emerged from the dark waters, its venomous tentacles trapped in a fishing net. Within minutes, hundreds more were being hauled up, a pulsating mass crowding out the catch of mackerel and sea bass.

The fishermen leaned into the nets, grunting and grumbling as they tossed the translucent jellyfish back into the bay, giants weighing up to 450 pounds, marine invaders that are putting the men’s livelihoods at risk.

The venom of the Nomura, the world’s largest jellyfish, a creature up to 6 feet in diameter, can ruin a whole day’s catch by tainting or killing fish stung when ensnared with them in the maze of nets here in northwest Japan’s Wakasa Bay.

“Some fishermen have just stopped fishing,” said Taiichiro Hamano, 67. “When you pull in the nets and see jellyfish, you get depressed.”

This year’s jellyfish swarm is one of the worst he has seen, Hamano said. Once considered a rarity occurring every 40 years, they are now an almost annual occurrence along several thousand miles of Japanese coast, and far beyond Japan.

Scientists believe climate change — the warming of oceans — has allowed some of the almost 2,000 jellyfish species to expand their ranges, appear earlier in the year and increase overall numbers, much as warming has helped ticks, bark beetles and other pests to spread to new latitudes.

For more information:
Ocean warming causes jellyfish to swarm northern waters

Source: nydailynews.com

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Within the first 6 days of Hatoyama’s appointment as Prime Minister of Japan he addressed the United Nations Summit on Climate Change. His words are those of cooperation and leadership in the fight on Climate Change and curbing CO₂ emissions. Click on the link below for the full speech.

Prime Minister Hatoyama’s statement at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change.

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