Wed, Jul 9 01:14 PM
TOYAKO, Japan (Reuters) - The Group of Eight industrial nations will hold talks with eight other fast-growing countries in a Major Economies Meeting at next year's summit in Italy, the White House said on Wednesday.
The 16 major economies, which together account for 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, met on Wednesday to discuss climate change but not all developing nations were convinced.
"The most significant take away from this meeting, in addition to the very substantive leaders' declaration, was the desire of all leaders to continue this process," said Dan Price, assistant to U.S. President George W. Bush for international economic affairs.
China, India, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil were joined by Australia, South Korea and Indonesia at the meeting with the G8, which comprises Japan, Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Russia and the United States.
The G8 agreed on Tuesday to work towards the goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 but said they could not do it alone and pressed developing countries to join them.
James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said a handful of the major economies leaders that attended the meeting -- three or four -- were willing to support the G8 goal in varying degrees.
"Some countries are not ready to do that yet. Other countries are ready to explore it a little more closely," he told reporters. "All of them have agreed that we must have a long-term goal. All of them agreed the goal needs to be ambitious."
He declined to name the countries.
"The G8 has taken a significant step forward in its level ambition and on each issue you will see the major emerging economies have taken a step forward toward that from where they started," he told reporters.
"We are not in complete convergence yet but we found a way to have a dialogue to accomplish that," he said after the two-hour meeting.
At the G8 meeting next year, host Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he planned to keep the format largely the same for talks with major economies on the environment.
"The structure will be like this: the first day, the G8, the second the G8 plus the five so-called emerging nations," he said. "The third day in the morning the meeting widens to Africa and the third day in the afternoon, the conclusive meeting of only the G8."
With the economic climate so precarious, 2009 will be a time when successful businesses have to redefine what they do and how they do it.
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