The WWF charity has criticized the G8 for failing to boost international climate negotiations at this year’s summit in Japan. With the current threat of dangerous levels of climate change, the WWF feel the G8 lacked commitment to reduce global emissions by at least 50% by 2050.
The WWF reminded G8 leaders that rich nations must reduce emissions by 25 to 40% by 2020 with science clearly outlining the need to cut global emissions to avoid the worst impact. With the G8 responsible for 62% of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the Earth’s atmosphere, it makes them the main culprit and the biggest part of the problem. With little progress over a whole year of meetings and negotiations, it falls dangerously short of what is needed to protect people and nature from climate change.
WWF said the summit confirmed a recent trend that some larger countries like Canada, Japan and the US emphasised their inability to move on climate change, whilst emerging economies made concrete policy proposals offering more domestic action.
With Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda at the head of the G8 Presidency, it was a case of raising high hopes and delivering little. The WWF has urged the Japanese government to implement an emission trading scheme and to set a domestic emission reduction target in the range of up to 40 per cent by 2020.
Head of the Climate Programme at WWF Japan, Naoyuki Yamagishi, said –
“Prime Minister Fukuda made a huge effort and ended up with a mediocre result, which is the opposite of effective leadership and cannot be counted as success. Rapid improvements at the domestic policy front are his only chance to restore trust in his ability to protect Japan from dangerous climate change.”
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