CANCUN, Mexico (Kyodo) Environment Minister Ryu Matsumoto repeated Sunday that the United States and China need to join a new framework for reducing carbon emissions that can succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
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Matsumoto made the remark after arriving in the Mexican resort city of Cancun to attend the ongoing U.N. climate change conference. The nearly 200 countries at the event are trying to work out a new international framework for fighting global warming.
"We need a much larger framework given that the emissions by the countries obligated to reduce their emissions under the Kyoto Protocol account for only 27 percent of the world's total," he said.
The Kyoto pact requires only developed countries to slash greenhouse gas emissions, but the United States is not taking part in it. China and the U.S. — the world's two largest carbon dioxide emitters — are therefore not bound by the 1997 pact.
Matsumoto did not clearly state his opposition — as the Japanese delegation did at the outset of the talks last week — to extending the commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.
Asked whether Japan would agree to continue reducing its emissions under the legally binding protocol from 2013 if a new framework including the United States and China is formed, he said, "We still can't see what the new framework would look like. We have no choice but to make judgment after progress is made on the discussions."
Japan has come under fire for opposing calls by developing countries to extend the Kyoto pact. Japan has said it will not accept, under any circumstances, having a reductions target under the Kyoto pact extended through 2013 and beyond.
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