G8 meeting to provide litmus test of EU`s climate offer

Berlin: India will join countries accounting for more than two-thirds of the world's carbon pollution for a meeting in Potsdam in Germany this week for the first test of Europe's proposal to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020.

These countries include the G-8, of which Germany is currently the president, and representatives from the five major developing nations — Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa.

The only worldwide pact for reducing global-warming emissions is the UN's Kyoto Protocol set to expire in 2012. The Kyoto protocol has become a lame-duck agreement following a thumbs-down from the US, which alone accounts for nearly a quarter of gloibal pollution.

Negotiations are underway for a new form for the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. Everyone agrees it must deliver enormous cuts to avoid what many experts fear could be deep, irreversible damage to the climate system.

But for this to happen, the post-2012 deal needs the endorsement of the US and the five developing countries. China, India and Brazil are said to be emerging as major polluters, but under the present Kyoto format do not have to make pledges of targeted curbs in their emissions, as industrialised countries do.