A group of experts in Gulf countries and energy affairs emphasized the importance of deepening the interconnections of exchange in information and trade between Asian countries and the Gulf Corporate countries (GCC) for the energy security of south and east Asia.
In a forum hosted by Kuwait’s Reconnaissance Research Institute Wednesday and titled “Looking East: Future prospects of Asia,” three experts from Japan and India discussed the stability of the energy market with a special focus on the security of the GCC region for the future of major Asian economies such as India, Japan, China and South Korea.
Senior fellow at the Japanese Ministry of Defense and ex-Ambassador to Qatar and UAE, Ambassador Kazuo Sunaga focused on the political ties that hold Kuwait and Japan for decades stating that the two friends “cultivated a productive and a friendly relation that witnessed multiple historical events such as Iraq’s invasion in 1990 and Japan’s earthquake in 2011,” which in both events solidarity was proven.
“Kuwait and Japan showed us the way countries should behave when facing such calamities,” Sunaga added.
He then mentioned Kuwait’s role as a mediator for various political crisis and hosted a number of international forums that called for peaceful approaches to regional conflicts, another trait or a mission Japan shares with Kuwait.
And because of the importance of the GCC region, including Kuwait, and their share of the global energy market, the importance of the security of the region “cannot be overstated,” emphasizing Japan’s serious role in the maritime security of the area and its commitment to it in the future and that Japan seeks to develop both economic and security relation “in parallel.” On the other hand, Professor Aftab Pasha, an Indian scholar specialized in the Gulf region, talked about Kuwait early interest in democracy and its late Amir Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Al Sabah that showed interest multiple times to witness India’s parliament to its implementation of the constitution.
Professor Pasha lauded Kuwait’s Development Fund which funded over 80 infrastructure and energy related projects in India with low-interest loans and because of that and its diplomatic relations, Kuwait’s sovereignty remained intact.
“We look at the security and peace issue in the GCC as directly linked with the security of south and east Asia, as our economies and prosperities’ are interconnected,” he reiterated.
Professor Pasha said that there has been a shift in the past couple of decades toward the “East rather than West because nobody can contain the explosive growth of some of the Asian countries,” and emphasizing the need to continue the cooperation to supply the energy from the GCC to them.
Lastly, Yukari Yamashita, the managing director of the institute of economics and energy in Japan, talked about new challenges that the world been facing when it comes to energy security, one major issue being climate change which was on the top agenda for many countries before the Russian-Ukrainian conflict that was ignited in 2022 and impact negatively the supply of natural gas in the world.
Because of that, many Asian countries are reconsidering using coal to electrify their grids while others are reconsidering their fossil fuel consumption as more environmental friendly alternatives proved multiple times its inefficiency to meet the demand under extreme weather conditions.
That is why “fossil fuel is still required not only in the short term but medium and long terms,” as we develop better technologies and start the transition to cleaner energies in the future.
Yamashita explained that by sharing development and technologies between energy consuming and producing countries “could accelerate cost reduction, in particular, to the advancement of decarburization.” This is considered the 5th forum held by independent think-tank Reconnaissance Research Institute which was established in 2019 aiming to build bridges between Kuwait and the international community.
Source: Kuwait News Agency