Cooperate on climate change
October 19, 2009
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called on the developed and developing worlds to work together to combat climate change, calling on the former to come forward with finance offers and the latter to come forward with the plans and actions that such finance could support.
Speaking during the second day of meetings being held by the environment ministers of the 17 nations making up the Major Economic Forum (MEF) in London, Brown said that the time has come to stop pointing fingers and start negotiating a deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol at the end of the year in Copenhagen.
"I believe we can do this. I believe also that such an agreement not only must but can put the world on a trajectory to a maximum average global temperature increase of two degrees," he added.
British economist Nicolas Stern, who headed the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, has calculated that global emissions will have to be reduced to 20 gigatons per year by 2050, down from the current level of 50 gigatons. On the way to that goal, the world would have to reduce its emissions to 40 gigatons by 2020 and 35 gigatons by 2030.
Brown is one of the few MEF leaders planning on attending negotiations in Copenhagen this December. The MEF is responsible for an estimated 90 percent of the world's current emissions.
The October 18-19 meeting is the latest in a US-instigated series of forums meant to build support for the UN-backed process. The London talks focused on how to turn a patchwork of national policies into an international deal, as well as on climate finance and technology cooperation.
mrm/Reuters/AP/AFP
Editor: Michael Lawton