According to Bloomberg.com, “Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard will urge Japan to set an “ambitious” target for cutting greenhouse gases by 2020 to lead the way for developed nations negotiating a climate treaty this year.

“If Japan comes up with an ambitious target, Japan will then have a significant role in paving the way for a new emissions deal,” she said in an interview today.

Hedegaard, who will host United Nations climate-treaty negotiations in Copenhagen in December, spoke during a visit to Tokyo during which she will meet Japan’s prime minister. She’s trying to prepare the way for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol global-warming agreement, whose emissions limits expire in 2012.

Industrialized nations that are bound by the 1997 Kyoto agreement are trying to get developing countries such as China and India to accept greater limits on heat-trapping gases in the next treaty to prevent environmental damage from climate change.

“The more ambitious the target the developed countries set, the more likely it will be that some emerging countries follow suit,” Hedegaard said.

Debate is advancing in the world’s second-largest economy over setting a mid-term emissions target as a panel advising Prime Minister Taro Aso prepares a recommendation, due by June 30. Japan has pledged a long-term target of trimming emissions by between 60 percent and 80 percent by 2050.”

Full story on Bloomberg.com.

Photo from Asia Cleantech.