G8 ministers agree on global warming accord
Date: 10-Apr-00
Country: JAPAN
Author: Kazunori Takada
In a joint communique issued after the three-day meeting in the western Japanese
city of Otsu, the ministers agreed that an early ratification of the Kyoto
Protocol was necessary and that most countries should achieve that by the year
2002.
"We agreed that an early ratification of the protocol was necessary and that this
means that most countries must do so by 2002," Kayoko Shimizu, Japanese
Environmental Agency chief and also chairman of the conference, told reporters.
The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 commits industrial countries to reduce their
greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by
2008-12. Developing countries were not subject to any specific timetable or
target under the plan.
The G8 countries papered over differences on more concrete details of the accord,
such as specifying a deadline for its ratification and caps that can be set for
greenhouse gas emission trading under a hotly debated emission-trade plan.
Nevertheless, environmental groups said the meeting was clearly a step forward.
"I think it was a success that the countries of the EU were able to persuade the
United States to agree on the clause for the 2002 date," said Yurika Ayukawa,
Climate Change Campaign Officer for World Wildlife Fund Japan.
Japanese government officials said on Saturday that the United States was against
setting any time frame for the ratification, saying that would work against the
early ratification.
The results of this conference should pave the way for the success of a U.N.
climate change conference in The Hague later this year, which is considered
crucial in promoting the early ratification and enforcement of the Kyoto
Protocol, Ayukawa said.
The sixth Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate
Change (COP6) to be held in The Hague in November, was expected to enforce the
Kyoto Protocol by hammering out concrete measures for reducing emissions of
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are widely suspected of causing
global warming.
The G8 includes the Group of Seven (G7) industrial countries - the United States,
Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada - and Russia.