Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda of Japan, which becomes head of the Group of Eight industrial nations in the new year, pledged Wednesday to use the role to promote eco-friendly technology.
Fukuda said he would highlight environmental diplomacy when he heads on a four-day visit Thursday to China, promising to invite Chinese experts to visit Japan to learn about curbing pollution.
"Sometimes, Japan is mislabelled as an inefficient, emitting nation," Fukuda said in a traditional year-end address to Nippon Keidanren, Japan's biggest business lobby. "We must promote our technologies to the rest of the world. That should benefit Japan and the rest of the world," Fukuda said.
Japan, which will host the G8 summit in July, is home of the Kyoto Protocol, the landmark treaty on fighting global warming. But green groups attacked Japan for siding with the United States at this month's UN climate change conference in Bali. The final document lacked an EU-led call for a clear goal on how far to slash greenhouse gas emissions after Kyoto's obligations expire in 2012.
Fukuda hailed the Bali agreement, noting that it brought onboard all nations-including top two emitters the United States and China-in the process to draft further environmental treaties.
"We now have a framework that all the major emitting nations are part of," Fukuda said. "We can now start exchanges of ideas. We have a basic forum which will serve as the foundation." "The future of our world is not going to be about fighting wars. But rather, it will be about finding solutions through negotiations," Fukuda said.
Japan has proposed a goal of cutting global emissions by half by 2050, which Fukuda said he would promote in Beijing. "We want to take pro-active steps and want to cooperate and make proposals to China," Fukuda said. Japan is nonetheless far behind on its Kyoto obligations to slash emissions by six percent by 2012 as its economy recovers from recession in the 1990s.