Brundtland said the political deals of the Group of Eight and the European Union on reducing carbon emissions were useless unless big emitters like China and India, which refuse to accept binding targets, changed their stance.

"We in the G8 and EU know the importance of these political understandings," she said at the third and penultimate meeting of the G8's so-called Gleneagles Process on climate change, clean energy and sustainable development in Berlin.

"But if we do not find a way forward which the rest of the world will listen to and be part of, then we have not found a solution. We need to have common thinking as we look ahead," Brundtland said.

"It is the responsibility of the industrialised countries to get the developing world to see that we can share the globe without ruining it."

The former Norwegian prime minister said all nations needed to commit to a new United Nations framework on climate change in the aftermath of the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse commissions, which expires in 2012.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said the aim of the Gleneagles meeting was to bring the developing world around before negotiations begin in Bali, Indonesia, in December on the foundation for a post-Kyoto pact.

"We are here to talk about convincing the developing world. Up to now China and India have said that they do not have to negotiate," Gabriel told reporters.

"By Bali we need to have changed this attitude. We need agreement between the developed and the developing world."

The minister said a statement issued at the weekend by the 21 leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation bloc, which includes major polluters like China, the United States and Japan, "does not go far enough".

APEC countries agreed to "aspirational targets" on fighting climate change, in a text that environment campaigners dismissed as an empty gesture.

China leads developing nations in arguing they cannot make the same commitments on fighting climate change as wealthy countries because it will set back their economic growth and efforts to fight widespread poverty.

The G8 meeting is being attended by the environment and economy ministers of the 20 biggest energy users, including several big developing nations such as Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa.

It will on Tuesday see a group of former heads of state and government unveil a proposal for a global energy tax aimed at forcing nations to use less fossil fuel, Brundtland's fellow UN climate change envoy Ricardo Lagos said.

Germany this year holds the presidency of the G8, which set a non-binding goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 at its summit in June in the German Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm.

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