TOYAKO, Japan — A joint gathering of major developed and developing nations agreed today that climate change is “one of the great global challenges of our time” and pledged to back a United Nations effort to conclude a new climate pact by 2009.
The major economies said they supported long-term and midterm goals for greenhouse-gas reductions but endorsed no targets.
It came a day after the Group of Eight major industrial democracies set a goal of halving heat-trapping emissions that contribute to global warming by 2050.
The U.S.-led, 17-member group issued a final statement on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in northern Japan. “We support a shared vision for long-term cooperative action, including a long-term global goal for emission reductions, that assures growth, prosperity, and other aspects of sustainable development,” the expanded group said.
But the developing nations invited to the gathering were not ready to go as far as supporting the 50 percent reduction by 2050.
Jim Connaughton, chairman of President Bush’s Council of Environmental Quality, said that “several” of the emerging economies were willing to support the target, but not enough to allow that language to be put in the declaration.
The expanded group included China and India. They were invited to sit at the table with the Group of Eight: the U.S., Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Canada, Italy and Russia.
Today’s statement also pledged to support a U.N.-led effort to conclude a new global-warming pact by the end of next year.
Environmentalists deplored the statement as meaningless without any targets.
“This whole initiative has been a wild-goose chase and hasn’t brought anything constructive to the U.N. talks,” said Antonio Hill, of the aid group Oxfam International, an advocacy group that works on climate change and other causes.
Developing nations such as China and India have criticized the G8’s position statement for failing to state clearly what wealthy nations’ commitments are.
Bush has pushed the so-called Major Economies Meeting to gather the countries most responsible for the greenhouse gases being emitted today.
Critics have attacked the grouping for excluding nations, such as small-island states, that will suffer most from the effects of global warming, such as rising sea levels.
In its own statement, the G8 did not specify a base year for its proposed 50 percent cut, and the actual emissions reductions and the effect on the environment could vary hugely depending on what is eventually decided. Reductions from 2005 levels, for instance, would be far less than from 1990 levels, as in the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
The G8 statement fell far short of demands by some developing countries and environmentalists pushing for deeper cuts by 2050 and a firm signal from wealthy countries on what they are willing to do on the much tougher goal of cutting emissions by 2020.
