Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will pledge Japan's further assistance to developing countries in coping with climate change-related natural disasters at this week's United Nations climate summit in New York, a government source said Saturday.

Thursday's summit, convened and hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, comes as the international community seeks to finalize a new protocol for dealing with global warming beyond 2020 at a U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change conference at the end of next year.

According to the source, Japan hopes to get an edge in negotiations for the new framework by emphasizing its international contributions to disaster management, one of the country's strong fields.