Environment ministers from rich countries and other major greenhouse gas emitters kicked off talks on ways to curb emissions and save species as the United States called for a global fund to develop clean technologies.

Ministers and their representatives said on Saturday that action was urgently needed to tackle climate change, but advanced and developing countries are split on how to cut greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

The three-day meeting of the Group of Eight and rapidly growing economies such as China and India comes as poor countries balk at global targets to cut emissions, demanding that rich nations cut their own and pay for costly clean energy projects.

Japan said the G8 needed to show initiative for developing countries to do their part in fighting climate change, blamed for droughts, rising seas and more intense storms.

"We need to send a message that we will make it easier for emerging countries to act, with financial mechanisms and technological cooperation," Japanese Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita told reporters.

"At the same time, the G8 must make clear their stance that they will act firmly," he said.

Delegates, meeting in the port city of Kobe, are tasked with building momentum for talks on setting long-term targets to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, an issue to be taken up at a leaders' summit in July.

G8 leaders agreed last year in Germany to consider seriously a goal to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a proposal favoured by Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan and Canada.

But developing countries, keen to put economic growth first, have resisted targets without the United States doing more to cut emissions and have demanded that rich nations help with funds to pay for clean technology.

"Technology and finance should be taken up in discussions," China's Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, told the meeting.

"China's government will be responsible for its actions and we will have to face up to the challenges."

Earlier, the United States, in talks with Japan, called for a global fund to finance research for clean technologies.

NO JACKETS, NO TIES

Eager to show off its green credentials at the meeting, Japan has sent fuel-cell and hybrid cars from its world-class carmakers to pick up delegates from the airport, and has called on participants to bring their own cups and chopsticks to cut trash.

The dress code will be "cool biz" - a Japanese campaign every summer for office workers to take off jackets and ties to minimize air conditioning and reduce emissions.

Japan is debating its own long-term reduction target and domestic media have urged the government to also set a mid-term goal to show Tokyo can take the lead on climate change at the G8 and in U.N.-led efforts for a new framework after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

About 190 nations have agreed to negotiate by the end of 2009 a successor treaty to the Kyoto pact, which binds 37 advanced nations to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

But countries are divided on how to shape the new framework and Japan may see limited support this weekend for its proposal for emissions curbs for particular industries, such as steel or cement, that could be added up to a national target.

Many developing nations worry that sector-based targets will throttle their energy-intensive growth.

The Kobe meeting kicked off with a session on biodiversity, which will review steps being taken for a U.N. goal set in 2002 to slow the rate of extinctions of living species by 2010. Most experts say that target is nowhere near being met.

Those discussions, which coincide with a U.N. conference in Germany, will include ways to combat illegal logging and reduce deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries.

Ministers will also talk about how to reduce, reuse and recycle waste.