Japan in key position to tackle climate change: U.N. official
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NEW YORK - Japan, which hosts the Group of Eight summit in 2008, should be in a lead position to bridge differences between countries in attempts to reach a broad agreement on climate change, the top climate official at the United Nations said Thursday.
‘’I think that G-8 presidency represents an important opportunity to reach agreement within the G-8 on that long term goal and to hopefully, also within the G-8 framework, define the intermediate steps that need to be taken,'’ Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told Kyodo News in a telephone interview from his office in Germany.
While progress was made at the last summit in Germany on the global fight against rising greenhouse gas emissions, the next gathering, in Japan, will offer a platform for industrialized nations to further assist and support developing countries.
‘’I think that the Japanese presidency of the G-8 can help to develop that concept and get a clearer understanding of what G-8 countries are willing and able to do to help developing countries act on climate change,'’ he noted.
Attempts to reduce the carbon footprint are increasingly critical as the current agreement to combat greenhouse gas emissions as outlined in the Kyoto Protocol is set to expire in 2012.
The protocol, formulated in 1997, requires developed countries to cut their emissions from 1990s levels by an average of 5.2 percent by the expiring year.
In anticipation of the expiring protocol, the General Assembly recently held debates in an effort to jump-start a critical negotiation process that is to take place in Bail in December. Ahead of the Bali conference a high level meeting will be convened at the U.N. headquarters in September.
As Japan was instrumental in the creation of the environmental protocol, de Boer said he expects that the Japanese can utilize their political leverage when they host the G-8 summit in Hokkaido July 7-9.
‘’I think that makes Japan a very important political leader in the U.N. process and I think that Japan can be instrumental in helping to design a post 2012 climate change regime and to fulfill a leadership role in that context,'’ he said.
Meanwhile, the executive secretary expressed concerns about Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who recently criticized the Kyoto Protocol in the Australian daily, ‘’The Age.'’
He countered statements by Downer, who said the Kyoto Protocol barely covered a third of global emissions and suggested that it demanded nothing of developing economies.
‘’Now it’s true that only industrialized countries have legally binding targets under the Kyoto Protocol, but all countries have the responsibilities to undertake measures to mitigate climate change, so the protocol is broad in its approach,'’ he said, adding it had been ratified by 175 countries and addressed more than 70 percent of global emissions.
While India recently called for 25 percent of the country’s power generation to come from renewables by 2030, China announced plans to cut its energy intensity 20 percent over five years.
Additionally, de Boer was concerned about impressions that the Kyoto Protocol had imposed top down targets on countries. He explained the Kyoto caps were left up to the countries themselves to determine and that the framework was flexible enough to allow for a variety of approaches.
In a recent interview with Kyodo News, Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, who is charged with negotiations on global warming, spoke of the importance of bottom up approaches when she unveiled that nationally defined carbon emissions and a global review of each country’s emission-reduction efforts would be the basis of an international climate conference the United States will host next month.
‘’I think that there is a lot of useful architecture in both the convention and the protocol that can be used to build a post 2012 climate change regime that is actually close to what the U.S. wants,'’ he said.
While the United States pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, de Boer said he believes that the upcoming Washington conference, to be held Sept. 27-28, is ‘’an important one'’ and that President George W. Bush will bring the outcome of his initiative back to the U.N. process.
Despite the criticisms, de Boer expressed optimism about future developments, particularly in light of the recent General Assembly debates and the increased momentum that is bringing the issue to the forefront.
‘’I think if you compare it with the situation six or nine months ago there seems to be much more momentum at the moment and a growing willingness to really advance on this issue,'’ he said.
Filed by Egor Ouzikov under Climate Change