By Xinhua
Honolulu (US) : Representatives from 17 highly industrialised countries and the United Nations called for rapid implementation of the Bali Roadmap as they wrapped up Thursday a two-day closed-door meeting on climate change.
The participants “underscored the importance of rapid progress in implementing the Bali Action Plan and noted that Major Economies Meetings (MEM) can assist the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) toward a successful outcome,” James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality at the press event after the meeting.
The representatives welcomed Japan’s hosting of a clean energy technology workshop in Chiba, Japan, in mid-March.
Known as the Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change, the Honolulu meeting serves as a follow-up to the first round of US-hosted climate change talks last September in Washington.
The idea of bringing together the world’s major economies for climate change talks was initiated by US President George W. Bush in May 2007, when the US was under growing pressure to contribute more to solving the problem of greenhouse-gas emissions.
Although the Bush administration repeatedly said the Hawaii meeting is simply to supplement the UN efforts in battling climate change, there are suspicions that it is intended to sidetrack the UN climate talks and push forward its own agenda on the issue, which the US government denies.
At the climate change talks in Bali, Indonesia, last December, the US government agreed to help in constituting a new accord to replace the emissions-limiting Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
However, Washington is still resisting a global agreement on specific emission reduction from all developed nations. At the Honolulu meeting, US officials reiterated that the country has different understandings on mandatory pollution reduction with the rest of the world.
Although doubts of US motive behind the meeting still remains, delegates said they welcomed the change of US attitude on climate change.
A major question for the meeting is how much input it can contribute into the UN process.
“The process could make a contribution to the ambitious goals of the UN negotiations,” Yvo De Boer, UNFCCC executive secretary, said at the opening session of the meeting Wednesday.
“If countries represented at the meeting manage to take the Bali decisions to a next stage, process can be accelerated and the ambitious deadline of 2009 can actually be met,” he added.
Another worry is that since the US will welcome a new president next year, it is unclear how long the MEM will exist.
But officials of the Bush administration argued that the US climate policy will be consistent no matter who is in power, saying any major policy decision on climate change will have to be based on strong bipartisan support.
Some 160 representatives from the European Union (EU), the UN, Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Britain and the United States attended the conference.