An annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Kyoto in early May is likely to highlight environmental issues and promote efforts to craft a new pact aimed at curbing global warming after 2013, its president Haruhiko Kuroda said Tuesday.
"As this year also marks the 10th anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol, we will be taking the opportunity to focus attention on the region's environmental challenges and obligations," Kuroda said in a speech in Tokyo.
"We will also be discussing how we can move beyond Kyoto to ensure a cleaner and healthier future," he said.
The Kyoto Protocol, formulated in 1997, requires industrial countries, including Japan, to cut their greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by an average of 5.2 percent by 2012.
But critics say the pact is ineffective because it does not cover such emerging countries as China and India, while the United States never signed it.