G8, EU make progress in climate commitments: study

(OTTAWA) - The Group of Eight industrialized nations and the European Union have made greater strides this past year than previously in meeting their commitments to stem global warming, said a report Wednesday.

"This year, compliance has increased noticeably across climate-related commitments," said the G8 Research Group's annual compliance report.

The research Group based at the University of Toronto evaluated whether or not commitments made by the eight nations at talks in June 2007 in Heiligendamm, Germany, have actually been met.

"In general terms, compliance with climate and energy commitments was higher than with those in all other policy areas except trade," the report said.

It looked at 23 key commitments out of 329 in the areas of trade, poverty, disease, energy, security, nuclear nonproliferation, and climate change.

"Yet the prevalence of 'partial compliance' scores suggests that ambitious targets and notable policy statements have not (all) been adequately followed-up by concrete policy actions and budgetary allocations."

The final results revealed that the EU has done the most to fulfill its Heiligendamm commitments.

Conversely, Russia was the only G8 member to attain a negative score, as it was assessed to be non-compliant with two commitments: promoting less emission-intensive energy production, and supporting climate adaptation and mitigation in developing countries.

The EU and G8 nations had also pledged at the Heiligendamm summit to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, promote less emission-intensive energy consumption, and curb deforestation.

Japan had a "relatively strong performance," ahead of Germany, the United States and Britain. Canada, France and Italy trailed because they were found to be in partial compliance.

The authors of the study believed that the higher compliance scores recorded this year were due to growing media coverage of the climate crisis that coincided with the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007.

This created an impetus for governments to meet their obligations and introduce new climate policies, it said.

Host Germany had made climate change "an important item" at the Heiligendamm talks, raising expectations that the negotiations would produce an ambitious plan, and renewed will to take policy action.

But the prevalence of partial compliance scores may mean such summits led governments to also make "lofty and far-reaching policy statements that meet public expectations without implementing these into concrete policy actions."