Ethiopia Invited to Attend G-8 Summit

24 March, 2008

A record 23 countries will participate in the Group of Eight summit meeting to be held in July in Toyakocho, Hokkaido, government sources said Wednesday.

The upcoming meeting will become the largest so far after it was decided to invite 15 nonmember countries to participate in "expanded dialogue" that will focus on climate change and African development, according to the sources.

During meetings involving the G-8 member countries, Japan--the host of the summit--will propose a plan to establish the "Toyako Process" (Lake Toya Process) in which 20 countries, including major greenhouse gas emitters, will discuss a post-Kyoto Protocol framework, the sources said.

The expanded dialogue on climate change to be held July 9, the last day of the three-day summit, will invite eight other countries to participate, including South Korea and emerging countries with a high economic growth rate--Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa.

The government is considering turning the expanded dialogue into the Major Economies Meeting, as the combined volume of greenhouse gases emitted by the 16 countries involved--the eight member countries and the eight nonmember countries--accounts for almost 80 percent of the global total, according to the sources.

Further, the government aims to help establish a post-Kyoto Protocol framework for 2013 and beyond, by asking other major greenhouse gas emitters to share a long-term target--that of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Japan proposed this idea at last year's G-8 summit meeting in Germany.

The Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period ends in 2012.

As part of the government's efforts, it plans to propose its Toyako Process at the July summit, which is designed to follow on from dialogue initiated during the G-8 summit meeting in Gleneagles, Britain, in 2005. The G-20 dialogue, or the Gleneagles Dialogue, is referred to as the ministerial meeting on climate change, clean energy and sustainable development.

With the G-20 dialogue drawing to a close after its fourth meeting, to be held in Chiba on March 14, the government hopes the Toyako Process will expedite negotiations at a meeting of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to reach an agreement on the creation of a post-Kyoto Protocol framework next year.

Meanwhile, the expanded dialogue on African development, to be held on the first day of the July summit, will be attended by eight countries, including Tanzania, which chairs the African Union, and South Africa. Ethiopia, which hosts the New Partnership for Africa's Development, also will participate in the meeting.

At the expanded dialogue on African development, participating countries will discuss measures to achieve goals in fields including health care, water supply and education, based on the Millennium Development Goals that set targets to be accomplished by 2015, including that of halving the number of people facing famine on the continent.

Nonmember countries have been invited to G-8 summits since the G-8 meeting held in Okinawa Prefecture in 2000.

The G-8 member countries are Japan,Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States.

The Kyoto Protocol obliges industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent from the 1990 level during the first commitment period lasting from 2008 to 2012.

However, the United States, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, withdrew its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. China, meanwhile, is not obliged to cut its emissions, as it is considered a developing country under the protocol.

Unless all major gas-emitting countries take part in the creation of the post-Kyoto Protocol framework, any measures to tackle greenhouse gas problems will not be workable, according to observers.