Britain yesterday became the first country to propose legislation setting binding limits on greenhouse gases as it stepped up its campaign for a new global warming pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

In its draft Climate Change Bill, the government said carbon dioxide emissions had to be cut by at least 60 percent by 2050, set out five-year carbon budgets to reach the target and created an independent monitoring committee to check annual progress.

Prime Minister Tony Blair put climate change at the top of the international agenda when Britain was head of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in 2005 and it could now become the first nation to limit emissions by statute.

"This bill is an international landmark," Environment Minister David Miliband told a news conference. "It is the first time any country has set itself legally-binding carbon targets. It is an environmental contract for future generations."

The draft bill also sets a legally-binding interim target for carbon cuts of 26 to 32 percent by 2020.

Miliband said failure to meet targets could land governments in court. "Governments that fail to meet the stipulations of the bill will be subject to judicial review. It will be for the courts to decide what sanctions to apply," he said.

Environmentalists welcomed the carbon cut budgets which require any overshoot in a given year to be recouped later.

The draft bill will go to three months of public and parliamentary consultation before becoming law next year, but green campaigners want to raise the 2050 target to 80 percent and set annual 3 percent cut targets to ensure compliance.

The government rejects annual targets as being too rigid to make allowances for climate variations from year to year.

The Kyoto Protocol is a global pact on tackling carbon gas emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport that scientists say will boost average temperatures by between 1.8 and 4.0 C this century. It runs out in 2012.

Britain and Germany are leading the charge to extend Kyoto and expand its scope to bring in the US which rejected it in 2001. The British draft bill comes after EU leaders agreed last week to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020.

Source: China Daily/agencies