U.N. calls at climate talks for G8 to do more
SYRACUSE, Italy (Reuters) - The United States and other rich nations must do more to help clinch a landmark deal on climate change this year, a top U.N. official said at a meeting of global environment ministers.
The three-day meeting of the Group of Eight industrial countries and major developing economies, which opened in Sicily on Wednesday, has been hailed as a stepping stone to a U.N. deal on climate change, due to be signed in December in Copenhagen.
All eyes were on the U.S. delegation since President Barack Obama's pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 injected momentum into the Copenhagen talks. His predecessor, George W. Bush, rejected the previous Kyoto deal.
"It's not enough and the United States needs to do more," Yvo de Boer, the United Nations' top climate change official, told Reuters. "Without leadership from the G8 countries an international response to climate change will not happen. This meeting needs to point the way."
Scientists have said industrialized countries as a whole needed to reduce carbon emissions by between 24 and 40 percent from 1990 levels to avoid severe impact from climate change.
De Boer said the political will existed to seal a deal in Copenhagen and the economic crisis provided a chance to promote green technology as part of stimulus packages -- something, he said, developing nations like China and Korea had done.
The G8 meeting, which opened on Earth Day, grouped for the first time nine developing economies, including Brazil, India and China -- by some calculations the world's largest carbon producer -- in an effort to forge a worldwide consensus.
SLOWDOWN OFFERS "OPPORTUNITY"
"The global economic slowdown must be viewed as an opportunity to mitigate climate change," Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency, told the meeting. He called for an "Energy New Deal."
Initial signs were the downturn slashed investment in green technologies last year, Tanaka said, but the IEA's members have already committed to $128 billion in environmentally friendly energy measures as part of plans to tackle the crisis.
That is just a fraction of the $15 trillion the IEA calculates is required to research and deploy low-carbon technologies, from carbon storage to electric vehicles.
Delegates, including executives from companies like German automaker BMW and Japanese industrial group Mitsubishi, discussed the most effective means of channeling green technology spending, particularly in poorer nations.
"This G8 aims to spread low-carbon technology in order to allow developing and emerging countries to follow the path to eco-friendly development hand in hand with Western countries," Italian Environment Minister Stefania Pestigiacomo said.
The United Nation's de Boer called for the conference to sign a technology cooperation pact between G8 members and developing countries. He said he would meet with industrial nations to press for the money to help finance technological change in the developing world, one of the main demands of poorer countries.
Non-governmental groups praised the G8 for broadening the talks to developing nations -- most at risk from climate change-related disasters like droughts and flooding -- but said the meeting was unlikely to produce concrete results.
"It was a good opening, a step forward, but the talks were rather limited in scope," said Magdalena Anna Kropiwnicka, of
Action Aid International.
(Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Charles Dick)