Japan climate plan questioned by poorer nations: NGOs
MAKUHARI, Japan (AFP) — Japan proposed Saturday at a meeting on global warming to set energy efficiency targets for each industry, but activists said the idea was met with suspicion by poorer countries.
Japan is a front-runner in energy-efficiency technology but is struggling to meet its own obligations to slash greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol as its economy steadily recovers from recession in the 1990s.
In talks on drafting Kyoto's successor, Japan has been lukewarm on EU-led calls to set further broad binding targets for each nation and has advocated a so-called "sectoral approach" establishing goals for every industry.
Japan is hosting weekend talks of the world's top 20 greenhouse gas emitters in a bid to push forward the slow-moving negotiations on a new treaty after Kyoto, whose obligations expire in 2012.
"On the whole, the sectoral approach has gained the common understanding of member countries," Japanese Trade Minister Akira Amari told reporters after a session on technology.
But activists from non-governmental organisations who were inside the closed-door talks said that developing countries had questioned the Japanese proposal.
"The Japanese presentation was not very clear. They talked about the efficiency target but didn't say how," said Jurgen Maier, director of the German NGO Forum on Environment and Development.
"They didn't say what countries do what," he said.
Developing countries, led by fast-growing China and India, instead pressed their case that rich nations should give them technological and financial help and not hold them to the same obligations in emissions cuts, activists said.
Midori Sasaki of the Geneva-based World Business Council for Sustainable Development said that China "also wanted to do joint research rather than simply accept technology transfer from developed countries."
The United States, the main opponent of Kyoto, supported the Japanese proposal, said Yurika Ayukawa, vice chairman of WWF Japan.
