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The Greenhouse Gas Inventory Office (GIO) of Japan has organised the “Workshop on Greenhouse Gas Inventories in Asia (WGIA)” since 2003. The workshop is tasked to improve GHG inventory dataset credibility in Asia and help bind countries within the Asian region. Participating countries are Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam (14 countries). Since the 6th WGIA (WGIA6) in 2008, WGIA has been convened as part of the “Kobe Initiative” of the G8 Environment Ministers’ Meeting. WGIA participants are government officials, inventory compilers, researchers and staff in international organisations. The workshops have been held in other Asian countries to help attract more attendees. Participants from many countries can conduct face-to-face discussions at WGIA. Many achievements were realised through the workshops, in particular:

This collaborative approach may be applicable for other regions.

The response to climate change is a matter of increasing urgency, and from 2020, every nation will be required to reduce its GHGs. The unified reduction policies of the central governments of each country form the core of reduction policy implementation. Actual reductions are planned and implemented for each region and sector. As climate policies are strongly related to the development strategies and energy policies of each country, it is thus necessary for each country to independently mobilise knowledge to formulate strategies and policies based on domestic natural and developmental conditions.

The response to climate change has brought about a major turning point in modern civilisation, which was founded, and yet is still heavily dependent on fossil fuel energy. As Asian countries are currently in a period of strong growth, Asia as a whole must set a course towards low-carbon development that differs from the paths taken to date by developed industrialised countries. Science-based initiatives are indispensable to the formulation of climate policies, and in order for individual countries to frame policies and maintain ownership of them, scientific bases will, respectively, need to be created by each country.

From 2020, part of all-country participation in climate change mitigation entails INDCs (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) be formulated. It is here that the achievements of a series of scientific cooperation projects promoted in the Asian region by the Government of Japan, in particular the Japanese Ministry of the Environment, can fully be appreciated.

Reducing GHG via scientific policymaking involves following the sequence of reduction target setting, reduction policy design, policy implementation, continuation and feedback (see Fig. 12.2). In order to carry this out, it is necessary to (1) ascertain GHG emission volumes for all processes (GHG inventories); (2) establish approaches to create unified climate policies for central and local governments (technologies, energy and GHG policy integrated assessment model, IAM); and (3) develop mechanisms to foster related research communities and strengthen contributions therefrom to policy formulation (e.g. via strategic research programmes, fora for dialogue on policy and science).

In light of the growing importance of Asia in terms of global climate policy, the Government of Japan, together with other Asian countries, has promoted the creation of such scientific bases since the 1980s. These efforts have significantly assisted in policy formulation, including INDCs, in Asian nations. Further, the Low Carbon Asia Research Network (LoCARNet), comprising researchers directly engaged in climate policymaking processes in each country, was launched in 2012 in view of the rise in urgency of climate policy. LoCARNet has since organised relevant research communities based on ownership in each country to engage in the challenge of low-carbon development in Asia by facilitating knowledge sharing and cooperation throughout the Asian region.

Section 12.1 of this report describes the cooperation between Government of Japan and other Asian countries. Section 12.2 introduces in particular the activities of LoCARNet towards building research communities to promote concrete actions from 2020 as good practices to be disseminated throughout the world.