Staff writer

The Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition government is informally considering hosting a landmark United Nations-sponsored summit on the global environment in 2002 to advance an international crusade on environmental issues, informed sources said Wednesday.

The sources said the coalition government -- which includes the Liberal Party and is expected to be joined by New Komeito as early as the end of the month -- will decide by next spring, at the latest, whether to declare Japan's candidacy to host the U.N. environmental summit.

The 2002 U.N. summit will be held to review progress made during the decade since the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development, better known as the Earth Summit, in Rio de Janeiro and also to consider additional measures to protect the global environment.

Details of the 2002 conference, including the specific dates and venue, are expected to be determined at the U.N. General Assembly session in autumn 2000.

The sources said that the U.N. has informally conveyed to Tokyo a desire to see Japan declare its candidacy to host the summit.

The U.N. has sponsored landmark environmental conferences every 10 years -- in Stockholm in 1972, Nairobi in 1982 and then in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. There is a growing consensus among U.N. member nations that the next landmark environmental conference should be held in Asia, the sources said.

According to the sources, some within the ruling coalition propose holding the summit in China, the world's most populous country with more than 1.2 billion people and one of the five permanent members on the powerful U.N. Security Council. But Beijing seems reluctant to host the summit, the sources said.

In fact, former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, who still has great influence on the LDP-led coalition's environmental policy, broached the idea with Chinese President Jiang Zemin when they met in Tokyo last November during Jiang's first visit as a state guest. But the Chinese leader did not show any interest, the sources said.

Even if Beijing shows a willingness to host the 2002 U.N. environmental summit, they said, global environmentalist groups may oppose the idea because they are harshly critical of what they view as the Chinese government's lax domestic environmental-protection policy.

If it becomes clearer that China has no intention of declaring its candidacy as host of the summit, the ruling coalition is expected to start full-scale consultations within the domestic ministries and agencies involved in environmental issues about the possibility of hosting the event.

If Japan formally declares its candidacy, there appears to be a strong possibility that the country will be chosen as the host, the sources said.

At the end of 1997, Japan hosted the third Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The convention was adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit.

At COP3, as the Kyoto conference is commonly called, more than 150 signatory countries to the U.N. convention adopted the landmark "Kyoto protocol" that sets legally binding requirements for industrialized countries to slash the total volume of their greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent between 2008 and 2012 from 1990 levels.

The protocol specifically obliges Japan, the United States and the 15-nation European Union to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases widely blamed for global warming, by 6 percent, 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

The Kyoto protocol also contains an agreement to introduce three schemes -- emissions trading, the clean development mechanism and the joint implementation -- to help industrialized countries achieve their greenhouse gas-reduction targets. But details of these schemes were not worked out at COP3.

At the fourth Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP4, in Buenos Aires last November, the convention signatory countries agreed to seek an agreement on the details of the three schemes at COP6.

COP6 is expected to be held in The Hague either in the autumn of 2000 or in the spring of 2001. Although COP5 will be held in Bonn later this year, no breakthrough seems likely in the stalled negotiations on the three schemes.

The Kyoto protocol has yet to take effect. Largely because of the lack of an agreement on the three schemes, most industrialized countries have not yet ratified the protocol.

According to the sources, there is a view within the LDP-led coalition that if the 2002 U.N. environmental summit is held in Japan, the signatory countries to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change should seek to make the Kyoto protocol effective before then and hold a ceremony during the summit to mark the accomplishment.