Asia-Pacific Greens
The Herald reports:
Green parties from as far afield as Iraq and Mongolia have been comparing notes with their New Zealand counterparts at a rare gathering today.
The Asia Pacific Greens Federation congress is being held in New Zealand for the first time, and has brought together Green politicians from 16 countries.
The congress in Upper Hutt was focusing on the impacts of climate change on the Asia Pacific region.
But it was also an opportunity for more established Green parties (Australia, New Zealand) to compare ideas and strategies with fledging Green movements (India, South Korea).
In countries where Green politics was relatively new, some parties had grown quickly.
Green Party Korea co-representative Yujin Lee said her party had registered more than 6000 members since establishing in 2013 – a number equivalent to the New Zealand Greens, which marked its 25th anniversary this year.
But that is out of a population of 50 million. So in the NZ context that is like having 500 members – the same as the Civilian Party or United Future.
Other parties spoke of the difficulty in getting a foothold in the traditional political landscape.
The APGF has 12 full members. They are in Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Nepal, NZ, Pakistan, Philippines and Taiwan.
But in reality they are only a significant presence in three countries – Australia, NZ and Mongolia. In all other countries they were not even on the ballot, or were so insignificant they had under 0.5% of the vote.
The Greens globally basically exist only in white European countries. Almost everywhere else they are insignificant.
Korean and Japanese representatives said their governments were expanding nuclear facilities, and defended this move by saying that the nuclear plants created fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
But the Green parties opposed nuclear power, so they had to fight for action on two fronts.
If you want less greenhouse gas emissions, then nuclear power is a very good option.
Foreign affairs spokesman Kennedy Graham said it showed that not only were Asia-Pacific countries increasingly responsible for the global share of carbon emissions
Here’s the share by country in Asia-Pacific:
- China 22.7%
- India 5.7%
- Russia 5.4%
- Japan 2.9%
- Indonesia 1.9%
- Iran 1.6%
- South Korea 1.6%
- Australia 1.3%
- Saudi Arabia 1.2%
- Turkey 0.9%
- Thailand 0.8%
- Kazakhstan 0.7%
- Malaysia 0.7%
- Pakistan 0.7%
- Taiwan 0.7%
- Vietnam 0.6%
- Iraq 0.5%
- Uzbekistan 0.5%
- Kuwait 0.4%
- Burma 0.4%
- Bangladesh 0.3%
- Philippines 0.3%
- North Korea 0.2%
- NZ 0.2%
- Singapore 0.2%
- etc etc
If you can get an agreement between China, US, EU, India and Russia that is over 60% of global emissions. NZ and the rest of the world I am sure would agree to reductions in line with the Big 5, if those five can agree.