Developing Asian nations must find ways to pursue economic growth while reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions, the UN's special envoy on climate change said.
BANGKOK: Developing Asian nations must find ways to pursue economic growth while reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions, the UN's special envoy on climate change said on Friday.
"The top priority of the countries in the region is the eradication of poverty through possible growth," Han Seung-soo told a forum on climate change in Bangkok. He said Asian countries emit 34 percent of the carbon fumes that cause global warming, mostly due to increasing energy consumption and deforestation, he said.
Developing nations were taking steps to curb emissions, he said, adding that on their own, they would not be able to do enough to fight climate change. "They will not be able to deliver the extent of emission reductions that the world needs," Han said, calling for concerted global action at a key international meeting that runs December 3-14 in Bali.
"We need a comprehensive and robust agreement" in Bali, he said. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Bali aims to see countries agree to launch a roadmap for negotiating cuts in climate-changing carbon emissions from 2012, when current pledges under the Kyoto Protocol expire.
Currently, only industrialised countries that have signed and ratified the protocol are required to make targeted cuts in their emissions. Developing countries do not have these pledges.
The United States -- the world's biggest carbon polluter in 2005 but widely tipped to be overtaken by China in 2007 -- remains outside the Kyoto Protocol and has demanded that developing nations make bigger sacrifices in cutting emissions.
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