The chief of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, Supachai Panitchpakdi, urged Japan to exercise leadership in establishing an effective technology-sharing scheme at the upcoming Group of Eight summit that can draw cooperation from emerging economies in tackling global warming.
The former director general of the World Trade Organization also said developing nations' exports should not be stifled in the name of preventing global warming, rapping such moves by some industrialized nations as protectionist.
"I hope that there will be some scheme from the G-8 in which this sort of sharing of technology could be enhanced," the UNCTAD secretary general said in an interview with Kyodo News on Tuesday.
In order to bring all developing countries on board with global efforts to cut carbon emissions, Supachai said it would be essential for Japan, "a major innovator" and "strong prime mover" in the area of energy efficiency, to promote transfer of its know-how to emerging major emitters like China, India and other fast-growing economies.
"Before you go and tell them what kind of targets, let's have this kind of transfer of technology and analysis so they would understand," he said, adding that a forced solution from outside players would not be accepted by developing countries eyeing growth acceleration.
While establishing an effective and inclusive framework to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol will be a daunting task in face of widespread opposition to binding emission goals, Supachai said cooperation in energy efficiency is less costly and could be immediately disseminated.
Japan will host the G-8 summit in July at the Lake Toya hot spring resort area in Hokkaido where climate change and development issues are expected to top the agenda. The G-8 nations are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.
Ahead of the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, the G-8 partners are keen to speed up negotiations on a new global pact to reduce carbon emissions.
The former deputy prime minister of Thailand also suggested the Geneva-based U.N. organization may consider proposing to the G-8 nations during the summit a more multilateral, broader use of the Clean Development Mechanism for the next-generation climate framework.
The CDM, part of the Kyoto Protocol to address global warming, allows industrialized nations who are major emitters of greenhouse gases to fund emissions cut projects in developing countries to obtain carbon credits and put the credits toward their domestic carbon reduction targets.
"If you do bilateral, you can only single out some of the bigger economies of developing countries, which has been the case of the past CDM," Supachai said. "We are going to work on development and trade, but link this with the possibility of having investment to be derived from the involvement with CDM."
According to the CDM Executive Board, Africa makes up a mere 2.6 percent of the 965 registered CDM projects in comparison to Asia's share of 62 percent.
Supachai also criticized the tendency of some industrialized countries to use climate policy as a facade for the protection of their own markets, saying claims of excessive carbon emissions will only become a barrier to trade in developing regions like Africa unless they are backed up by analytical data.
"When one discusses the juxtaposition of trade with climate policies, then I hope that industrial economies will think about how to avoid abusing climate policy," he said.
Striking a similar tone on international approaches to development, Supachai said a top-down, mandatory approach to fostering growth in least-developed countries would not be conducive, while calling for a review "to understand what happened in the past that has not rendered all this assistance fruitful."
The UNCTAD chief also voiced concern over excessive misgivings from the industrialized world about the development policies of emerging donors like China and India, which have often faced criticism for lack of transparency and bias toward pursuit of natural resources in disregard of human rights issues.
While acknowledging the need for a degree of discipline and scrutiny, Supachai said China and India offered alternative sources of funds for impoverished African countries without the preconditions often attached to assistance from industrialized countries.
"I think this is a new equation in which you see the emergence of the South, which would not be stifled," Supachai said. "We should encourage it instead of having new protectionism...in the areas of investment."
Japan is expected to slash its official development aid for fiscal 2008 for the ninth straight year, raising the prospect of dwindling Japanese influence in Africa and other developing countries while China ramps up its aid and investment in the region.Japan Economic Newswire
