Major industrialised countries are expected to create a multibillion-dollar fund later this year to help developing countries cut greenhouse gas emissions, World Bank President Robert Zoellick was quoted as saying. In an interview with Japan's Asahi newspaper published on Thursday, Zoellick said the fund would likely be finalised at the Group of Eight summit to be held on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido on July 7-9.

Despite little support for the proposal in the European Union It is an indispensable way of dealing with climate change France hopes other EU nations will change outlook PARIS: France is quite keen on nuclear energy being included as a mitigation measure under the Kyoto Protocol to tackle climate change though the European Union (EU) is not in favour of it, according to a French diplomat. A formal pitch is yet to be made in this direction.

The international fight to control climate change heads to a new arena in June when the Senate is to debate a bill that could cut total US global warming emissions by 66 percent by 2050. Environmentalists are supportive but want more in the legislation, the business community questions the economic impact, and the politicians who have shepherded it seem gratified that it has managed to get this far -- even though it is unlikely to become law this year.

Environment ministers from the G8 rich nations on Monday urged their leaders to set a global target to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a small but vital step in the fight against climate change. But they stopped short of suggesting specific interim targets ahead of 2050, a key demand of developing countries in tough UN-led talks to forge a new treaty on global warming by the end of next year. Germany's secretary of state for the environment, Matthias Machnig, said the ministers had sent an important signal to their leaders on the direction in which talks needed to go.

The United Nations' top climate-change official expressed concern Saturday about what Japan means by "industrial sectoral" approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and warned that the concept should not replace national targets in any new environmental treaty that would take effect when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

Japan's market for carbon emission reduction systems and services to help prevent global warming may expand 5.6-fold from fiscal 2007 to 6.93 trillion yen by fiscal 2015, a market research firm said Tuesday. The fast expansion is coming as the government and private sectors accelerate efforts to achieve Japan's greenhouse gas emission reduction target in four years from April this year under the Kyoto Protocol, Fuji Keizai Co said.

Eighteen months before a new climate pact must be agreed, the world appears to be drifting in negotiations that could be the most complex ever, experts said. The pact is needed to replace or extend the Kyoto Protocol on tackling global warming, whose first round ends in 2012. Some 190 countries have agreed to clinch by November 2009 a new or amended pact, mindful it would take at least two years for so many national governments and parliaments to ratify it.

International laws: Even as 1987 Montreal Protocol laid down rules to banish ozone depleting substances (ODS), several of the substitutes that came into use were GHGs. These were covered under the Climate Change Convention. The Kyoto Protocol included six GHGs and committed developed countries to mandatory emission reduction targets of these gases.

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