A climate change breakthrough at G8 summit

Offering an opening for a global agreement

According to James Griffin, a journalist from the Issue Alert news website, the recent June G8 summit in Heiligendamm provided a breakthrough.

He points at a statement hidden away in the middle of the final announcement: 'We acknowledge that the United Nations (UN) climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating future global action on climate change. We are committed to moving forward in that forum and call on all parties to actively and constructively participate in the UN Climate Change Conference in Indonesia (Bali) in December 2007 with a view to achieving a comprehensive post-2012 agreement (post-Kyoto agreement) that should include all major emitters.'

This declaration contains three remarkable points:

1. It means that the United States has agreed for the first time to the goal of developing a new global accord on climate change
2. Contrary to a declaration by the U.S. President George Bush prior to the meeting, the U.S. also agreed to achieve this goal as a part of a UN process
3. The declaration talks about ‘all major emitters’. This expresses the intention to also include developing countries like India, China, Brazil, and Mexico.

That last point may still be a tough nut to crack, since India and China have already categorically stated that they would reject mandatory emission targets. India has even stressed that it is up to the developed world to take the initiative.

There is absolutely no guarantee that the recent G8 announcement means that the UN convention in Bali will become a success and bring forth a global agreement. For the first time ever, though, at least an opening for such an agreement has been created.