PREFACE

Technical difficulties in implementing the Clean Development Mechanism, an international mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol is baseline issue. To address this issue, an international workshop was held at Tokyo's Hotel New Otani on February 25^th and 26^th, 1999, inviting globally renowned experts in this field.

Hosting organization was New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), with The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), The Environment Agency (EA), and The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) as co-sponsors, and the Global Industrial and Social Progress Research Institute (GISPRI) as the secretariat.

Subjective intention of this Workshop was to clarify the starting point in the coming discussion on the design of Kyoto Mechanisms by accumulating the latest experiences and knowledge of experts.

Thanks to the active participation of many experts, commentators, and policy-makers from all over the world, intensive discussion was conducted at the workshop despite its highly technical theme, providing productive result for participants as well as hosting and co-sponsoring organizations.

Especially, experts making presentations at the Workshop were cooperative in preparation of paper and OHP transparencies, enabling the distribution of these documents at the Workshop in order to enhance the understanding of participants. We hereby express our sincere appreciation for their cooperation. In particular, we would like to appreciate Dr. Robert Dixon of USDOE/IGES for his extensive contribution in identifying appropriate personnel, agreeing to chair the first day sessions, and preparing the presentation.

Please note that, due to time restriction, all the papers were as distributed at the Workshop, although some experts expressed wishes to edit them.

We sincerely hope that the Workshop discussion will provide useful input into the upcoming negotiation for Kyoto Mechanism designing.