REPRESENTATIVES OF the world’s 16 largest greenhouse gas emitters held an emergency meeting yesterday to try to salvage backing for a strong statement on climate change at this week’s Group of Eight (G8) meeting in Italy.
Signals that China and India would not sign up to headline emissions reductions led the US on Friday to call yesterday’s closed-door meeting in Rome.
It aims to smooth the passage of a key climate change debate tomorrow at L’Aquila, at which eight countries will join the G8 industrialised nations, including China, India, Mexico and Brazil.
The European Union also participates as a member of the G8, as does Denmark, which hosts a key conference in December to forge a successor to the Kyoto protocol.
US president Barack Obama called together the leaders of the world’s biggest emitters for the first time in a bid to revive sluggish progress in global warming negotiations. The 16 countries in the Major Economies Forum (MEF), which was begun under former US president George W Bush, produce 80 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions.
A key issue at the MEF, which will be co-chaired by Mr Obama and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, will be whether to include a formal commitment to hold global warming to no more than two degrees above preindustrial levels, which scientists regard as the limit of safety.
If agreed by the MEF, it would be the first time such a commitment has been formally adopted by an international forum.
But the commitment was in doubt yesterday as China sought to achieve additional concessions on funding for poor nations to cut emissions and adapt to climate change, and for more of the burden of emissions cuts by 2020 to be taken up by rich countries.
“The G8 must agree more investment for the developing world and stronger midterm targets on CO2 to get China’s backing,” said Tobias Muenchmeyer of Greenpeace. “They must show leadership.”
The debate at L’Aquila is intended to give momentum to the separate UN negotiations under way to update the Kyoto protocol, which culminate at Copenhagen. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)