UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for Japanese companies to help fight global warming through green investment and ambitious emission cut targets, a business lobby said.

Ban, who met with Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone on Tuesday and was to hold talks with Prime Minister Taro Aso later Wednesday, held a closed-door breakfast meeting with the Japanese business lobby Keizai Doyukai.

The group's president Kunio Kojima told reporters Ban had stressed that "it is important that governments and companies set ambitious targets and implement 'green investment' through which people's awareness can change."

Ban had made the point that the climate change problem "cannot be resolved without cooperation between politicians, corporate communities and civil societies," Kojima said, indirectly quoting Ban.

Japan, the world's second largest economy, said last month it plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by eight percent from 1990 levels by the end of the next decade, a goal attacked as too little by environmentalists.

Japan's business lobbies, worried about their competitiveness and the global economic downturn, had called for a smaller emissions reduction.

Under the 192-party UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, nations are due to hammer out by December a new climate treaty which will replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012.

According to Kojima, Ban also said that developed countries including Japan should "make efforts to offer financial and technological support to developing countries to mitigate their crises."