[S. Korean Updates] Korea-Australia to hold a ministerial meeting for cooperative plan against climate change

Minister of Environment Yoo Young-sook and Greg Combet, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Australia, are having a bilateral meeting on 27 and discuss on cooperation plans between the countries against climate change. The meeting held by Minister Yoo’s invitation is a follow-up after bilateral meeting during the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17), 2011. Both Ministers had agreed on the need of active measures for reducing the greenhouse gases and emission trading which is a cost effective way to reduce the greenhouse gases based on the market mechanism.

During the meeting, Ministers will share Australia’s experience in carrying forward the emission trading with fixed price which is planned to be implemented in July and look for possibilities for cooperation between the countries’ policies.

Australia is one of the Annex I parties with targets and has adopted National Greenhouse-gas Emission Report (NGER) in 2007, establishing a system which Australian corporations measure, report and verify the greenhouse gas emissions. Possibility of policy cooperation and synergistic effects are expected as Korea is also planning to implement Green House Gas & Energy Reduction system, establishing Measuring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system this year and start pushing ahead with the adoption of emission trading from 2015.

In addition, the two ministries are planning to review holding regular MRV technical meetings from second half of 2012, agreeing that mutual acceptance is required on greenhouse gas MRV system for joint greenhouse gas reduction policy. Also, Minister Yoo is expected to request for Australia’s cooperation so that a new direction for climate change system can be presented during the upcoming Pre-COP in Korea, following Kyoto Protocol.

“As Korea and Australia have similarities in environmental field including emission trading, huge effect is expected from the meeting,” an official of the Ministry of Environment said.

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