Leaders of Japan and the EU called yesterday for “highly ambitious and binding” global targets in the fight against climate change, amid slow-moving talks on a post-Kyoto treaty.“Japan and the EU stress that a highly ambitious and binding international approach is required to deal with the scale and urgency of the climate change challenge,” a joint statement from the leaders at a summit said.
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and EU leaders including European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso held talks in Tokyo ahead of July’s G8 summit.
Japan, the host of the G8 summit, hopes to use the event to shape the course of negotiations on a pact on global warming to cover the period after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol’s obligations on slashing greenhouse gases expire.
Barroso hailed the joint statement as a “convergence” in positions between the EU and Japan.
“What we reached today was very important. There must be binding targets,” Barroso told a joint press conference with Fukuda.
But the Japan-EU statement did not give a specific figure for binding cuts.
The EU has proposed global emission reductions of 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels in a bid to stem global warming, which UN scientists warn could put millions of people at risk by century’s end.
Japan has joined the US in saying it is too early to take up numbers for future emission cuts, in negotiations aimed at meeting a UN-backed deadline to come up with a post-Kyoto deal by the end of next year.
But stung by environmentalists’ criticism, Japan said earlier this year that it would set its own national target for emissions reductions after 2012.
The joint statement said Fukuda and EU leaders “share the view that setting mid-term quantified national emissions reduction targets is an essential element of such a framework” to fight global warming.
Japan is far behind in meeting its Kyoto obligations as its economy recovers from a recession.
The US is the only major industrial nation to reject Kyoto, with President George W. Bush arguing that it is too costly and unfair to make no demands of fast-growing emerging economies.
But all three candidates to succeed Bush have pledged tougher action against global warming. The UN climate chief, Yvo de Boer, has said that a decision on the next global goal in emissions cuts would likely wait until the next US administration takes office in January.
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