News Analysis: G7's "ambitious" climate targets another empty promise?

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 a phaseout of fossil energy globally within this century.

Although the "club of rich countries" described their commitment as "ambitious", analysts doubted that considering their past real actions, what G7 made here could be another empty promise.

In a communiqué issued after the two-day G7 summit in luxurious Palace Elmau at the foot of Alps in Germany's southern Bavaria, leaders from the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada and Japan said they would continue their efforts to meet their previous commitment of providing 100 billion U.S. dollars a year by 2020 from both public and private sectors to developing countries to help them battle against climate change.

Other targets include: to seek a global decarbonization over the course of this century, to reduce global carbon emissions by 40 to 70 percent by 2050 compared to 2010 levels and to transform their own energy sectors by 2050.

"Urgent and concrete action is needed to address climate change," said the G7 leaders in the communiqué, asking "all parties" to share the task of emission cutting.

French President Francois Hollande, whose country will host the United Nations climate conference where a new global climate deal was set to be reached at the end of this year, was quoted by AFP as saying that the commitments was "ambitious and realistic".

Environmental activists, however, said the seven leading industrialized countries need more actions than words.

"G7 leaders still aren't spelling out how they will keep their promise to deliver 100 billion U.S. dollars in climate finance by 2020 and failed to commit to provide more of this money from public funds -- a vital foundation for success in Paris at the end of the year," commented Oxfam, an international nongovernment organization on development issues, "Developing countries need a credible financial roadmap, not a set of accounting tricks."

"Developing countries are ready to move fast and far on renewables, but they need finance and technology from rich countries to do it. We need to see more of these concrete commitments for immediate action," said Samantha Smith, leader of WWF's Global Climate and Energy Initiative.

The developed countries, including the G7, which held 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. A clear roadmap to meet this commitment, however, was never provided.

The Green Climate Fund, a green bank aimed at supporting developing countries' climate actions, has received a pledge of 10.2 billion U.S. dollars. By June 3, however, only 59 percent of the total pledged money was really delivered. No promised money was transferred from Canada, Italy and the United States yet.

"We urgently need a roadmap to the pledged 100 billion U.S. dollars. These (G7) countries still have plenty of opportunity between now and Paris to step up to the plate," said Anoop Poonia from Climate Action Network South Asia.

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.

Developed countries request developing countries to take a similar binding responsibility of absolutely reducing carbon emissions as they themselves were obliged by their historical responsibility and strong capability to, whereas developing countries insist that a principle of "common but differentiated responsibility" must be respected in the new agreement and, due to their limited capability and needs to develop economy and phase out poverty, they could only make contributions to address climate change in various ways depending on the financial and technology support they received from developed countries.

Analysts said the G7 countries themselves were not making enough efforts to phase out fossil fuels and cut emissions.

"G7 leaders have indicated that fossil fuels are on their way out. However you would not know it by looking at the national emissions reduction pledges they have put on the table for the crucial climate conference in Paris," said Oxfam's spokesman Jorn Kalinski, "They must now live up to their own rhetoric and kick their dirty coal habit."

In its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC), or climate actions it was willing to take under the new climate deal after 2020, officially submitted to the UN, Canada pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

The pledge was criticized by environmental groups which pointed out that the target was just equivalent to 14 percent below 1990 levels, a more commonly used base year for calculation of emissions reduction.

A similarly weak pledge was planned to be submitted by Japan, whose Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced earlier this month that his country was willing to reduce carbon emissions to 26 percent below 2013 levels by 2030. When compared with the 1990 levels, the target means Japan would only cut its emission by 18 percent by 2030.

According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific body of the UN, developed countries must reduce their emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 in order to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The European Union, which had already reduced its carbon emissions by 19 percent from 1990 levels in 2013, insisted during the ongoing UN climate talks in Bonn Germany that it was only willing to to further reduce its emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

"We know that there will be a lot of words at this summit...That's fine as long as there's real action behind it. We are looking for more than 'hot air'. We are looking for real action from this summit," said Adrian Lovett, Europe Executive Director of international campaign group "One" which floated huge balloons depicting G7 leaders on Sunday when the summit started.

"'Hot air' can mean empty promises...when it's all talks, and no action," he said. Endit