JAPAN: February 15, 2008


TOKYO - Japan hopes rich nation leaders will agree a goal for mid-century cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and a target year when they should peak, at a key summit it hosts this year, a senior official said on Thursday.


Koji Tsuruoka, Director General for Global Issues at Japan's Foreign Ministry, said climate change would be a central issue at the Group of Eight (G8) gathering in the northern island of Hokkaido in July, with national emissions targets and funding to help fight warming and adapt to a warmer world also on the agenda.

Last year's chair, Germany, failed to convince leading industrialised nations in the group to commit to cutting global emissions 50 percent from 1990 levels by mid-century.

Tokyo hopes instead to build consensus around the far less ambitious target of bringing 2050 emissions to half of current levels -- although the United Nations top climate official would prefer a focus on goals for the next decade.

"First we (must) agree on the long term goal, then we need to have a common goal on how and when we will be arriving at the peak of emissions," Tsuruoka told Reuters when asked what he hoped the conference would achieve.

"This is an issue we believe could be usefully discussed."

Japan's prime minister has said the country is keen to take a leading role in fighting climate change, although its delegates to UN climate talks in Bali last year were criticised by environmentalists for obstructionist tactics.

Tokyo is also ambivalent about tools and goals the European Union has embraced as key to fighting global warming. Japan rejects a 2 degree Celsius maximum for global temperature rises and does not have legally binding emission caps for industry.

Instead the country relies on voluntary cuts coordinated by a business lobby group, which leave Japan short of the reduction it has promised to make under the Kyoto Protocol.

But Tsuruoka said Japan was criticised in Bali only because it focused more on the negotiations than on briefing the media, and its overall approach was marked by an open-ended search for solutions that would help it build global consensus.

"The Europeans say two degrees and this has become a political issue rather than a scientific discussion, and we find that rather unfortunate" he said at his Tokyo office.

"The real issue is how would we be able, as the world, to cut emissions in a way that would allow us to achieve whatever target we agree on," he added.


DEVELOPING WORLD

This wait-and-see approach to the best way to tackle emissions puts Tokyo in an ideal position to bring poorer countries -- struggling to balance economic growth with pressure to cut emissions -- to the negotiating table, Tsuruoka said.

"The Japanese position is very principled but not dogmatic ... We believe climate change is an evolving issue, so if you position yourself in one position and are inflexible, you may not allow the circle to widen and include everyone," he said.

Although the G8 groups only rich nations, major developing world emitters like China would likely be invited as well.

"The G8 is not going to solve climate change," he said, adding that China may already be the world's top emitter.

"Unless you engage the developing world seriously in addressing the issue of their own emissions, any future framework you set up is not going to save the world."

(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg and Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)


Story by Emma Graham-Harrison


REUTERS NEWS SERVICE