Medvedev calls for joint commitments for emissions cut
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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday urged the world's leading economies to make coordinated efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
"Major economies of the world and effectively the largest emitters of greenhouse gas must simultaneously undertake the necessary commitments and strictly observe them," Medvedev said in a video blog posted on the Kremlin website.
He emphasized the need to make and abide by these commitments jointly by the international community, saying uncoordinated efforts will be ineffective and useless.
The president, however, said a differentiated approach should be applied to the commitments of developed and developing countries because "we are under different circumstances."
Russia's new objective to improve the global environmental situation is "to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels," Medvedev said.
"During the period between 1990 and 2020, Russia would secure the overall cuts of greenhouse gas emissions by over 30 billion tons," he said.
Medvedev added he would promote the adoption of decisions that would unite the efforts of all countries when taking part in the Copenhagen climate change conference later this week.
"This is critical because the quality of life of future generations on our planet depends on our understandings," he said.
The Copenhagen conference, which opened last Monday and will run through Dec. 18, gathered representatives from 192 countries and aims at mapping out a plan to combat climate change for a period from 2012 to 2020.
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