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Declaration of Leaders Meeting of Major Economies on Energy Security and
Climate Change
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For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary July 9, 2008

Declaration of Leaders Meeting of Major Economies on Energy Security and
Climate Change

ÿÿWhite House News
ÿÿEn Espa¤ol

ÿÿÿÿÿ G8 Summit 2008

We, the leaders of Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union,
France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea,
Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States met
as the world's major economies in Toyako, Hokkaido, Japan, on 9 July, 2008,
and declare as follows:

1. Climate change is one of the great global challenges of our time.
Conscious of our leadership role in meeting such challenges, we, the
leaders of the world's major economies, both developed and developing,
commit to combat climate change in accordance with our common but
differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and confront
the interlinked challenges of sustainable development, including energy and
food security, and human health. We have come together to contribute to
efforts under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the global
forum for climate negotiations. Our contribution and cooperation are rooted
in the objective, provisions, and principles of the Convention.

2. We welcome decisions taken by the international community in Bali,
including to launch a comprehensive process to enable the full, effective,
and sustained implementation of the Convention through long-term
cooperative action, now, up to, and beyond 2012, in order to reach an
agreed outcome in December 2009. Recognizing the scale and urgency of the
challenge, we will continue working together to strengthen implementation
of the Convention and to ensure that the agreed outcome maximizes the
efforts of all nations and contributes to achieving the ultimate objective
in Article 2 of the Convention, which should be achieved within a time
frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change,
to ensure that food production is not threatened, and to enable economic
development to proceed in a sustainable manner.

3. The Major Economies Meetings constructively contribute to the Bali
process in several ways:
  þ 

    First, our dialogue at political, policy, and technical levels has
    built confidence among our nations and deepened mutual understanding of
    the many challenges confronting the world community as we consider next
    steps under the Convention and continue to mobilize political will to
    combat global climate change.
  þ 

    Second, without prejudging outcomes or the views of other nations, we
    believe that the common understandings in this Declaration will help
    advance the work of the international community so it is possible to
    reach an agreed outcome by the end of 2009.
  þ 

    Third, recognizing the need for urgent action and the Bali Action
    Plan's directive for enhanced implementation of the Convention between
    now and 2012, we commit to taking the actions in paragraph 10 without
    delay.

4. We support a shared vision for long-term cooperative action, including a
long-term global goal for emission reductions, that assures growth,
prosperity, and other aspects of sustainable development, including major
efforts towards sustainable consumption and production, all aimed at
achieving a low carbon society. Taking account of the science, we recognize
that deep cuts in global emissions will be necessary to achieve the
Convention's ultimate objective, and that adaptation will play a
correspondingly vital role. We believe that it would be desirable for the
Parties to adopt in the negotiations under the Convention a long-term
global goal for reducing global emissions, taking into account the
principle of equity. We urge that serious consideration be given in
particular to ambitious IPCC scenarios. Significant progress toward a
long-term global goal will be made by increasing financing of the broad
deployment of existing technologies and best practices that reduce
greenhouse gas emissions and build climate resilience. However, our ability
ultimately to achieve a long-term global goal will also depend on
affordable, new, more advanced, and innovative technologies,
infrastructure, and practices that transform the way we live, produce and
use energy, and manage land.

5. Taking into account assessments of science, technology, and economics,
we recognize the essential importance of enhanced greenhouse gas mitigation
that is ambitious, realistic, and achievable. We will do more - we will
continue to improve our policies and our performance while meeting other
priority objectives - in keeping with the principle of common but
differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Achieving our
long-term global goal requires respective mid-term goals, commitments and
actions, to be reflected in the agreed outcome of the Bali Action Plan,
taking into account differences in social and economic conditions, energy
mix, demographics, and infrastructure among other factors, and the above
IPCC scenarios. In this regard, the developed major economies will
implement, consistent with international obligations, economy-wide mid-term
goals and take corresponding actions in order to achieve absolute emission
reductions and, where applicable, first stop the growth of emissions as
soon as possible, reflecting comparable efforts among them. At the same
time, the developing major economies will pursue, in the context of
sustainable development, nationally appropriate mitigation actions,
supported and enabled by technology, financing and capacity-building, with
a view to achieving a deviation from business as usual emissions.

6. We recognize that actions to reduce emissions, including from
deforestation and forest degradation, and to increase removals by sinks in
the land use, land use change, and forestry sector, including cooperation
on tackling forest fires, can make a contribution to stabilizing greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere. These actions also reduce climate change impacts
and can have significant co-benefits by maintaining multiple economic goods
and ecological services. Our nations will continue to cooperate on
capacity-building and demonstration activities; on innovative solutions,
including financing, to reduce emissions and increase removals by sinks;
and on methodological issues. We also stress the need to improve
forest-related governance and cooperative actions at all levels.

7. We recognize that adaptation is vital to addressing the effects of
inevitable climate change and that the adverse impacts of climate change
are likely to affect developing countries disproportionately. We will work
together in accordance with our Convention commitments to strengthen the
ability of developing countries, particularly the most vulnerable ones, to
adapt to climate change. This includes the development and dissemination of
tools and methodologies to improve vulnerability and adaptation
assessments, the integration of climate change adaptation into overall
development strategies, increased implementation of adaptation strategies,
increased emphasis on adaptation technologies, strengthening resilience and
reducing vulnerability, and consideration of means to stimulate investment
and increased availability of financial and technical assistance.

8. We affirm the critical role of technology and the need for technological
breakthroughs in meeting the interlinked global challenges of energy
security and climate change. In the near term, broader deployment of many
existing technologies will be vital for both mitigation and adaptation. In
particular, energy conservation, energy efficiency, disaster reduction, and
water and natural resource management technologies are important. We will
promote the uptake and use of such technologies including renewables,
cleaner and low-carbon technologies, and, for those of us interested,
nuclear power. Technology cooperation with and transfer to developing
countries are also vital in this effort, as is promoting capacity building.
For the longer term, research, development, demonstration, deployment, and
transfer of innovative technologies will be crucial, and we acknowledge the
need to enhance our investment and collaboration in these areas. Mindful of
the important role of a range of alternative energy technologies, we
recognize, in particular, the need for research, development, and
large-scale demonstration of and cooperation on carbon capture and storage.
We also note the value of technology roadmaps as tools to promote
continuous investment and cooperation in clean energy research,
development, demonstration, and deployment.

9. We recognize that tackling climate change will require greater
mobilization of financial resources, both domestically and internationally.
There is an urgent need to scale up financial flows, particularly financial
support to developing countries; to create positive incentives for actions;
to finance the incremental costs of cleaner and low-carbon technologies; to
make more efficient use of funds directed toward climate change; to realize
the full potential of appropriate market mechanisms that can provide
pricing signals and economic incentives to the private sector; to promote
public sector investment; to create enabling environments that promote
private investment that is commercially viable; to develop innovative
approaches; and to lower costs by creating appropriate incentives for and
reducing and eliminating obstacles to technology transfer relevant to both
mitigation and adaptation.

10. To enable the full, effective, and sustained implementation of the
Convention between now and 2012, we will:
  þ 

    Work together on mitigation-related technology cooperation strategies
    in specific economic sectors, promote the exchange of mitigation
    information and analysis on sectoral efficiency, the identification of
    national technology needs and voluntary, action-oriented international
    cooperation, and consider the role of cooperative sectoral approaches
    and sector-specific actions, consistent with the Convention;
  þ 

    Direct our trade officials responsible for WTO issues to advance with a
    sense of urgency their discussions on issues relevant to promoting our
    cooperation on climate change;
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    Accelerate enhanced action on technology development, transfer,
    financing, and capacity building to support mitigation and adaptation
    efforts;
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    Support implementation of the Nairobi Work Programme on impacts,
    vulnerability, and adaptation to climate change;
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    Improve significantly energy efficiency, a low-cost way to reduce
    greenhouse gas emissions and enhance energy security;
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    Continue to promote actions under the Montreal Protocol on Substances
    That Deplete the Ozone Layer for the benefit of the global climate
    system; and
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    Intensify our efforts without delay within existing fora to improve
    effective greenhouse gas measurement.

11. Our nations will continue to work constructively together to promote
the success of the Copenhagen climate change conference in 2009.

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