As the Paris Agreement turns five, the Japan Climate Initiative leads the transition to a net zero Japanese society.

Adopted at COP21 in Paris, France on December 12, 2015, the Paris Agreement will soon celebrate its fifth anniversary.
The Paris Agreement is an important blueprint for the world to come together to address climate change. To achieve that goal, all Parties – including developed and developing countries – pledged to keep the global average temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels and pursue every effort to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In the five years since its adoption, climate change impacts have worsened. In Japan, unprecedented weather disasters including Typhoon Faxai and Typhoon Hagibis in 2019 have brought huge loss to many people by destroying nature and their property.
Responding to the deepening climate crisis and the latest science presented in the IPCC 1.5 C Special Report in 2018, governments and companies, investors, local governments and educational institutions such as universities around the world– collectively known as subnational and non-state actors — are taking bold climate action in support of net-zero societies by 2050.

Japan is not an exception. There is a big growth of the number of the Japanese companies that have committed to the Science Based Targets Initiative and RE100 to mitigate their emissions and expand the use of renewable energy. Local governments are also stepping up to this challenge. In the past year, many local governments declared their commitment to be net zero carbon by 2050, increasing the number of subnational governments committed to decarbonization to over 180.
Japanese non-state actors, many of whom are Japan Climate Initiative (JCI) members, are truly leading the charge to address climate change at home.