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TOYAKO: The leaders of 16 of the world’s biggest
rich and developing nations agreed Wednesday to work together to
fight global warming but failed to bridge deep differences on how to
do it.
Leaders including US President
George W. Bush, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Indian Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh met at a Japanese mountain resort for a
special climate change summit that capped off the annual G8 summit.
But developing nations slammed as
too weak a call made a day earlier by the Group of Eight—Britain,
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United
States—for global emissions cuts of at least 50 percent by 2050.
The deadlock between rich and
developing nations has held up talks on reaching a new climate
treaty by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen—a goal set in December at
a UN-backed conference in Bali.
“Climate change is one of the
great global challenges of our time,” the leaders said in a
statement. “Our nations will continue to work constructively
together to promote the success of the Copenhagen climate change
conference.”
Rich nations and rising economic
powers also used the meeting to discuss ways to rein in surging oil
and food prices that are taking their toll on the global economy.
The leaders smiled for a group
photograph, with Bush patting Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva on the arm as they filed out of a luxury hotel in the
secluded hills of northern Japan.
But their statement said only
that rich countries would implement their own goals for cutting
greenhouse emissions while developing major economies would also
take action, without proposing any numbers.
It did not include a Japanese
proposal for developing nations to agree to long-term cuts in
emissions in exchange for action in the nearer term by rich nations,
one of the key sticking points in global climate change talks.
The Group of Eight powers on
Tuesday called for the world to cut carbon emissions by at least 50
percent by 2050 and urged developing countries to reciprocate in
kind, but developing nations dismissed the call as toothless.
The developing bloc urged rich
countries to cut emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020 from 1990
levels. The G8, in line with Bush’s policy, said only that each G8
country would set its own target for the mid-term period after 2012,
when the Kyoto Protocol’s obligations to cut emissions expire.
--AFP
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