[Original article updated 9/7/08 for Major Economies Meeting in Japan ]
The G8 leading industrial nations are only inching towards agreement needed to underpin a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, now on an 18-month deadline. The slow progress of the rich nations in turn sees China and India refusing to budge on any emissions reduction commitments.
But perhaps there is hope to be found deep in the text of the statements of both the G8 and developing nations this week.
At their annual summit, this year underway in Japan, G8 leaders agreed to target a 50 per cent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The target represents only a “vision” that G8 nations hope will be shared by all nations and does not bind them to national targets in their own countries.
The G8 members are the United States, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Canada and Italy – the largest developed economies and high on the world emissions league table. Their 2008 statement shows that from last year’s summit, they have moved from “considering” a 50 per cent cut to “sharing a vision” for such a reduction.
The group’s climate change statement acknowledged the need for interim targets to track towards the 2050 goal but did not quantify any. It is also not clear as to which base year the 2050 reduction goal is set against. The summit did declare an urgency for new measures to stimulate the development and deployment of clean technologies.
Environmental groups criticised the G8 for not going far enough, saying the latest scientific evidence suggests cuts of up to 80 per cent in developed nations by mid-century are what’s needed to avert dangerous climate changes, along with hard interim targets along the way.
Global negotiations on post-Kyoto climate action have made little progress over the past three years due to a stand-off between some developed countries, chiefly the United States, and major developing world emitters, led by China and India, over the sharing of the burden for emissions reductions. The US won’t commit until China and India do, but the developing nations are adamant the rich world must take the first steps. The EU and developing nations want all developed nations to commit to cut emissions by 25 to 40 per cent by 2020.
The stalemate was underlined in the Major Economies Meeting (MEM) on Wednesday, which brings together the big emitters from both sides of the economic divide - an initiative of the United States. The MEM group of 16 could only agree deep cuts in emissions were needed and that interim targets should be set for rich countries. But there has been no progress on binding commitments to such targets or what they should be. It appears China and India won’t even share the 2050 vision until developed countries adopt hard targets.
The G8 summit and MEM outcomes only add weight to the assessment by many observers that no substantial progress on a post-2012 treaty will be possible until the end of the Bush presidency in January next year. There is a glimmer of hope to be found, however, deeper in the G8 statement and a similar climate declaration from developing nations.
The G8 nations acknowledge that mitigation approaches will vary between countries. “We recognise that what the major developed economies do will differ from what major developing economies do, consistent with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” the summit statement said.
At a parallel meeting in Sapporo, the leaders of the large developing world economies Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa, hinted in their declaration that they might take on targets to curb the growth of emissions below business-as-usual levels if developed countries helped finance them and bit the bullet on their own targets for absolute emissions reductions.
“We would increase the depth and range of [mitigation] actions supported and enabled by financing, technology and capacity-building with a view to achieving a deviation from business-as-usual,” their declaration read.
It seems that a global treaty is possible based on both developed and developed nations committing simultaneously to different types of targets – rich nations to sizeable absolute reductions and developing nations to limits set on the growth in emissions.
More:
G8 statement on climate change and environmentG5 Developing Nations’ Political Declaration