Prime Minister attends AZEC leaders' first meeting for decarbonization

Addressing the meeting, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio affirmed the importance of achieving a common goal of "net-zero emissions through various pathways" and of a triple breakthrough of simultaneously achieving "decarbonization, economic growth, and energy security".

He touched on Japan's actions towards developing and introducing next-generation GX (Green Transformation) technologies, and expressed his willingness to share Japan's technologies and experiences through the AZEC platform.

Kishida proposed actions such as policy coordination through the "Asia Zero Emission Center" to be set up in ERIA (Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia), establishment of green supply chains through cooperation projects including development of zero emission industrial parks, collaboration among business entities by the "AZEC Advocacy Group", and promotion of transition finance.

Leaders of AZEC partner countries expressed broad support to the concept of AZEC as well as high expectations for AZEC activities.

In his remarks, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh highlighted the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change, which requires the international community to make real determination and take concrete actions to achieve net-zero emissions.

Pham briefed about Viet Nam's actions to realize its climate commitments at COP26, including the formulation and adoption of national strategy for climate change adaptation, green growth strategy, national power development plan VIII, development of one million ha of high-quality and low-emission rice, nationally determined contributions (NDCs), plan to implement the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), and announcement of a resource mobilization plan to implement JETP.

Pham suggested AZEC countries should focus on research and development, diversify clean energies and new technologies, accelerate technology transfer to ensure broad and affordable access to clean energies, and ensure clean energy transition in accordance with real conditions of each countries.

He also underscored the need to speed up climate finance and public-private partnership to create favorable conditions for developing countries to access preferential loans.

The Vietnamese Prime Minister called for strengthening cooperation in high-quality human resource training, smart governance, and improvement of market institutions./.