1st LD Writehru: G7 reaffirms commitment to fill gap of financial support to address climate change

The Group of Seven (G7) leaders reaffirmed their commitment on Monday to fill a gap of financial support to developing countries for addressing climate change, and declared to seek global decarbonization within this century.

In a communique issued after the two-day G7 summit at Palace Elmau in Germany's Bavaria, the leaders from the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada and Japan said they would continue their efforts to meet the target of providing 100 billion U.S. dollars a year by 2020 to developing countries to help they battle against climate change.

The fund, however, would not only come from public sector, the main source required by developing countries, but would also include private money, the communique read.

The G7 leaders also declared that they would seek a global decarbonization within this century and to reduce global carbon emissions by 40 to 70 percent by 2050 compared to 2010 levels, asking "all parties" to share the task. For the G7 part, the leaders said their countries would strive for a transformation of their energy sectors by 2050 as well as develop long term national low-carbon strategies.

Finance and allocation of carbon emission reduction responsibilities are two of the key issues in the ongoing tough climate negotiations under a United Nations framework towards a new global climate deal set to be reached at the end of 2015 in Paris.

The developed countries, due to their historical responsibilities to the climate change, promised in 2009 to increase their climate financial support to developing countries to 100 billion U.S. dollars a year by 2020. Developing countries and environment groups criticized that developed countries made an empty promise as a clear roadmap to meet this commitment was not provided yet.

Regarding the emission reduction issue, while developed countries requested developing countries to take a similar responsibility to absolutely reduce their carbon emissions, developing countries insisted that a principle of "common but differentiated responsibility" must be respected in the new agreement and due to their limited capability and development needs, they could only make contributions to address climate change in various types depending on the financial and technology support they received from developed countries. Endit