G8 leaders face challenges of climate change, world economy and security

Source: Xinhua  |   2008-7-6  |     ONLINE EDITION

WHEN the leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations gather in Hokkaido, Japan, this week for their annual summit, they face the challenge of showing greater resolve to fight global warming, remedying the world economy and easing tensions in the world's hot spots.

The host country Japan has put talks on climate change high on the agenda of the meeting in the northern resort of Toyako, building on the outcome of last year's summit in Germany, where leaders agreed to seriously consider a target of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

CLIMATE TALKS BOTTLENECK

At a UN climate change conference last December in Bali, Indonesia, about 190 countries agreed on a two-year, UN-led negotiation process with a view to coming up with an agreement to succeed the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol on cutting emissions.

But gaps exist among developed countries and between developed and developing nations over their share of the global efforts to fight climate change, which is blamed for rising sea levels and increasing extreme weather phenomena, such as droughts and severe storms. No breakthroughs were made at the UN climate change talks in Bangkok and Berlin earlier this year.

The world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the United States, has ruled out setting any quantified reduction targets and a timetable, in sharp contrast to the European Union, which has set a medium-term target of cutting emissions by 20-30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Some developed countries, including the United States, demand mandatory emissions cuts for developing countries, which were much smaller emitters of greenhouse gases before now and need stronger economic growth to develop. Data shows that some developed nationslead the world in emissions of carbon dioxide, the main driver of rising global temperatures, in history and in per capita emission.

GLOBAL ECONOMIC GROWTH SLOWDOWN