Britain's Blair calls for developing nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions

By The Associated Press

CHIBA, Japan: China, India and other developing nations will have to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions if the world is to avert a global warming disaster, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at a climate change conference Saturday.

An agreement to succeed the Kyoto global warming pact that expires at the end of 2012 will have to find a way to include developing nations, while allowing them to grow their economies, Blair said.

"The dilemma is this: how to cut a deal that has both the developed and developing in it, recognizing that the obligations on the one can't be the same as the obligations of the other," Blair said at the opening session of the conference outside Tokyo.

He noted China and India are on the verge of a transition from rural to industrialized economies — setting the stage for a huge rise in emissions.

China now generates a large share of the world's greenhouse gases, with some experts saying it has already overtaken the U.S. as the world's No. 1 emitter.

The United States and other wealthy countries are eager to include growing economies — and polluters — such as China and India on the next global warming pact.

Carbon dioxide and other pollutants are blamed for the rise in global temperatures. But developing countries say rich countries have the primary responsibility for reducing emissions, while poorer nations need to grow their economies.

Blair, who was in Japan on the first part of a trip taking him to China and India, said it would be unfair to deny developing nations the chance to expand. He said the United States, Japan and Europe — where per capita emissions are far higher — should bear the largest burden.

But all nations should share in the solution, he said.

"The emissions in the richer nations will have to fall close to zero, and those in poorer countries will have over time to fall as they industrialize," Blair told a meeting of 20 nations belonging to a climate change dialogue launched in 2005.

The two-day conference is focusing on how to develop and promote the use of clean energy technologies and how the world should finance poorer nations' efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change.

Blair, who stepped down as Britain's leader in June, arrived in Tokyo on Friday for a meeting with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

The visit was also part of a seven-day tour in his role as a consultant to The Climate Group, a nonprofit organization funded by corporations and governments from around the world. His aim is to rally support for a global pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050.

"The scale of what is needed is so great that the purpose of any global action is not to ameliorate or to make better our carbon dependence; it is to transform the nature of economies and societies," Blair said. "We're not talking of adjustment, we're talking about a revolution."

A U.N. conference in Bali in December struck a deal to conclude an anti-global warming pact by 2009, to take effect in 2013, but nations did not agree on a 2050 emissions target. Countries are still divided over whether to impose mandatory targets, a stand favored by the European Union, or allow individual countries to decide their own targets, which has support in Japan and the United States.

China and India have expressed a willingness to participate, but they insist rich countries must take the lead.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said Wednesday that developed countries are chiefly responsible for global warming and insisted developing nations should be allowed to set lower emission reduction targets.

To be continue in other article...

(Jakarta, Rabu 19 Maret 2008)

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