HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, June 8 (UPI) -- Group of Eight leaders Friday met with leaders of emerging economies such as China and India to discuss how climate change can be tackled together.
Officials from the Group of Five developing states -- China, India, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico -- arrived Friday morning in the summit venue, the German Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm.
Leaders of Ghana, Algeria, Nigeria and Senegal as well as the heads of the African Union and the initiative for a New Partnership for African Development also joined part of the talks.
The meeting comes a day after the world's eight most-industrialized nations -- the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Russia -- agreed to jointly lead the fight against climate change.
While the United States remains the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, India and China (the No. 2 emitter) are quickly catching up.
It is "extremely important" to get the emerging economies on board of a global climate change initiative, Hermann Ott, climate policy expert at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, said ahead of the meeting.
"The privileged states have to take the first step to bring these countries into the initiative," he told United Press International in a telephone interview Friday.
Ott said the G8 countries had to make three concrete pledges:
-- Commit to ambitious emissions reductions
-- "Concrete, binding" offers to help the emerging countries with the transition away from the fossil fuel era
-- Financial aid helping the emerging countries to adapt to the changes that will go along with global warming.
"If all that is paired with smart measures for technology transfer, then it's a package the emerging economies won't be able to refuse," Ott told UPI.
U.S. President Bush was not able to join the morning talks after he had fallen ill with a stomach flu, the White House said.
