As Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda kicked off Japan's climate diplomacy as this year's president of the Group of Eight, he took on the immense task of leading global negotiations to build a new carbon reduction framework involving all major polluters.
Japan plans to use this July's G8 summit in Hokkaido as the main vehicle to start the process of compiling a medium-term global emissions reduction target after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, according to Foreign Ministry officials.
For the long term, the G8 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the U.S. — and the United Nations have broadly shared consensus on cutting global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 from current levels.
But Japan is likely to face challenges from divergent views among the United States, the European Union and developing countries led by China and India over the method and the speed of reducing emissions, given their different approaches.