Thirty Energy and Environment ministers from 20 industrialised and emerging countries will gather here at the behest of the British government Tuesday and Wednesday to debate climate change and how to combat it. The informal meeting is to lay the groundwork for a Group of Eight (the United States, Canada, Britain, Japan, Russia, Germany, France and Italy) summit scheduled to take place at Gleneagles, Scotland July 6-8.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair holds the G8 presidency for 2005 and has set two priorities for his tenure, climate change and Africa. Blair will carry further weight at the G8 summit as he will by then also holds the revolving EU presidency.
Other than representatives from the G8 countries other industrialised nations due at the London gathering are Australia, Spain and Poland. Heavyweights from the South, China, India, Brasil, South Africa, South Korea, Indonesia, Mexico, Iran and Nigeria will also be represented.
The guests are the countries which will have the highest energy needs for the 30 to 40 years to come, organisers said. They will also be the countries pumping the largest amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels remain the main source of global energy and their use increases at pace with economic growth in a country.
The British government proposes to accelerate the use of so-called clean fuels and industrial processes already on the market which make the use of fossil fuels cleaner.
Environmentalists are deeply concerned that economic booms in the emerging countries will engender massive and uncontrolled increases of carbon dioxide emissions that may be catastrophic for the planet.
China and India could together overtake the United States' level of carbon emissions, the United States is the globe's worst offender, by 2015 according to current projections.
Blair sees new reductions in emissions as crucial to halt the acceleration of climate change and has called upon Washington and emerging countries to join the international effort to tighten up on pollution.
Quotas for reduction fixed at the Kyoto summit only targeted industrialised 0nations, while the United States rejected the protocol, claiming theirs was too tight. Washington has however moved to fall in line with the use of new technology.
The emerging countries though use the United States' refusal to comply with Kyoto as an excuse for their own lax practices and also feel that the protocol represents a barrier to their economic progress.
As the London meeting is to debate use of new technologies, where a consensus should easily be reached, it could help establish a dialogue crucial to solving the stalemate on climate talks.
The talks will move Thursday to Buxter, central England where links between climate change and the battle against poverty in Africa will be on the agenda. Another matter to be debated is the illegal trade in tropical wood, scheduled for Friday.
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