News | Climate Change

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The head of the U.N. climate convention cautioned last week against Japan's opposition to setting a new phase of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to fight global warming, and chided opponents for their "simplistic thinking."

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said in an interview in Tokyo that while a new legally binding pact on combating global warming is out of reach this year, all countries should redouble their efforts to reach an agreement.
The remarks came as climate negotiators from about 30 countries and international organizations gathered in Tokyo for a two-day informal meeting that ended Friday to discuss ways to tackle global warming beyond 2012, when the five-year commitment under the Kyoto pact will expire.
"I think we have to get away from this very simplistic thinking that the Kyoto Protocol, if it goes into a second commitment period, would mean that China and the United States don't do anything," Figueres said. "That's just completely not the case because countries are not going to accept that."
Under the protocol, developed countries are obliged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels over a five-year period from 2008. However, Washington refused to ratify the pact and China has no reduction requirements.
While developing nations are calling for a new commitment period beyond 2012 under the existing framework, Japan says it won't agree to further cuts unless other major emitters sign a binding pact.
Figueres said that while all countries need to take on responsibilities because no country is immune to the impact of climate change, industrialized nations bear the most responsibility as they have spent centuries emitting greenhouse gases.
"When we look at whatever framework countries are going to use, they will also need predictability and certainty in the same way that the Kyoto Protocol provides," Figueres said, noting that the United States and China should join such a framework "in some fashion."