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COUNCIL OF
THE EUROPEAN UNION
Brussels, 20 February 2009
(OR. en,it)
6769/09
ENV 133
DEVGEN 43
NOTE
from :
to :
Subject :
General Secretariat
Delegations
G8 Environment Ministers meeting (Syracuse, 22-24 April 2009)
Delegations will find attached an information note from the Italian delegation on the above subject,
which will be dealt with under "other business" at the meeting of the Council (Environment) on
2 March 2009.
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ANNEX
MEETING OF THE MINISTERS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT UNDER THE ITALIAN
PRESIDENCY OF THE G8
Syracuse, Castello Maniace, 22-24 April 2009.
The Ministers for the Environment of Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United
States, Japan, Canada, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa, Australia, the
Republic of Korea and Egypt, with the participation of the Czech Republic currently holding the
Presidency of the European Union, the European Commission, Denmark as the country hosting the
next COP of the UNFCCC, as well as a number of international organisations, will meet in
Syracuse from 22 to 24 April 2009 at the initiative of the Italian Presidency of the G8. An informal
high-level preparatory meeting will take place in Rome on 9 March 2009. At technical level, the
meeting of the G8 Ministers for the Environment will furthermore also be preceded by a Forum on
low carbon technologies, which will be held in Trieste from 3 to 5 April 2009.
The aim of the Syracuse meeting is to provide an opportunity to discuss and make progress in the
debate on combating climate change and preserving biodiversity, the two most important
environmental questions on the international political agenda. The Syracuse G8 Environment
Ministers' meeting should accordingly send an important political message on biodiversity and
facilitate dialogue on the subject of climate change with a view to Copenhagen 2009 (time will be
specifically made available for questions relating to low carbon technologies). In that connection,
the Environment Ministers will have the opportunity to meet representatives of civil society for an
exchange of views on those topics - climate change and biodiversity - to be discussed at ministerial
level.
The first two working sessions will be given up to climate change.
The first session, scheduled for the afternoon of 22 April 2009, will concentrate on discussion of
the "Prospects for and barriers to the development and dissemination of low carbon
technologies in the short, medium and long term", with particular attention to the necessary
financial architecture to promote such technologies, bearing in mind the present world economic
and financial crisis.
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Together with the representatives of the private sector from the various countries meeting in
Syracuse and those of the international organisations, the Environment Ministers will be able to
discuss the opportunities afforded by technological innovations to stimulate economic recovery and
- following the commitment by the G8 Toyako Summit in 2008 to promote clean energy
technologies in order to meet the double challenge of climate change and energy security - will
continue their exchange of views on this.
The second session, scheduled for 23 April 2009, will be given up to discussion of “Climate
change negotiation scenarios”.
This year will be decisive for the preparation of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change,
which will be held in Copenhagen in December 2009, and full success of the Conference will
depend on the special efforts to be made by all the governments concerned in the negotiations on
climate change. The meeting of the G8 Environment Ministers in Syracuse will therefore afford a
good opportunity to contribute to achieving that aim.
Discussion at the second session will accordingly concentrate on examining different options for the
post-Kyoto architecture, with the additional aim of considering how to reconcile financial
commitments for stabilising markets with the investment programmes required for reducing
emissions.
The third working session of the meeting, on the subject of "Biodiversity: a new perspective", is
scheduled for the afternoon of 23 April 2009. The amount of attention devoted to the goal of
reducing the loss of biodiversity has grown steadily and the debate has felt the beneficial effects of
greater political attention. With a view to 2010, International Biodiversity Year, there will be
consideration of the international community's possible contribution to the post-2010 strategy on
biodiversity. An assessment of the results of the 2010 objective, together with a debate on the
contribution of biodiversity to achieving the aims of the Millenium Development Goals and to the
mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, will allow us to identify the possible scenarios
which must be brought to the attention of the international community.
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