Tokyo is committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent by 2030, despite the difficulty of achieving the target, Japanese Environment Minister Yoshiaki Harada said on Wednesday
KATOWICE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th December, 2018) Tokyo is committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent by 2030, despite the difficulty of achieving the target, Japanese Environment Minister Yoshiaki Harada said on Wednesday.
"It's likely to be very difficult to achieve that goal, and by managing our GHG [greenhouse gas] reductions every year, we are committed to reaching that reduction of emissions by 26 percent ... in 2030," Harada said at an EU side event at the United Nations climate change conference, COP24, in the southern Polish city of Katowice.
The minister stressed that climate change was a pressing issue that all countries should tackle, adding that all nations must "raise their ambitions" with regard to the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and create long-term strategies.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, the governments agreed to a long-term goal of maintaining the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and limiting the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. NDCs represent efforts by each country to reduce national carbon emissions as well as to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
