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Aus seeks fresh climate deal
02/09/2007 15:40 - (SA)
Meraiah Foley
Sydney - The host of this week's summit of Pacific Rim leaders said on Sunday they should strike an agreement on fighting global warming, but binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions should not be part of it.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, laying out reasons for putting global warming on the agenda of the normally trade-focused Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, said the bloc had an important role to play in building a new global framework on climate change.
But a new approach, he said, should ditch the emissions targets in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change in favour of voluntary strategies that recognize individual nations' varying levels of development.
"Our view is that we need a new flexible framework that includes a long-term global goal and encourages a wide range of national actions by all with ongoing due processes," Howard said.
Howard, whose country is among the world's highest emitters of greenhouse gases per capita, has been a key opponent of the Kyoto pact, which expires in 2012. A major UN meeting in Indonesia later this month will begin working on a successor agreement.
Howard said discussions at Apec would likely include the possibility of setting emission targets, "but I think it's very unlikely that agreement can be reached on a figure."
Australia and the United States are the only two industrialized countries not to have ratified Kyoto, arguing that binding emission targets could harm growth and leave them at a competitive disadvantage to China and other developing countries not held to the pact's targets.
A document on climate change being circulated at this week's Apec meeting in Sydney calls on members to voluntarily make "measurable and verifiable contributions to meeting shared global goals," according to a draft obtained by environmental group Greenpeace and seen by The Associated Press.
"What I would like to see the Apec meeting in Sydney do is develop a consensus on the post-Kyoto international framework that attracts participation by all emitters," Howard told reporters.
The sprawling Apec region, which includes the world's three biggest emitters of greenhouse gases - China, the United States and Russia -accounts for roughly half of global trade and 56 percent of the world economy.
To support his initiative, Howard released a report by a government research body, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, saying Apec economies accounted for 58% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2004. Those would be 130% higher by 2050 if members take no action to cut them, the report said.
The report highlighted the potential of new and more efficient technologies to combat climate change, ideas Howard has said should be given more attention.
Howard said any new agreement should recognize that developed and developing countries must "make a contribution," albeit at different levels.
"You cannot expect a country like China to accept precisely the same constraints or discipline as a country like Germany or the United Kingdom," he said. "Their economies are at vastly different stages of development and that has always been the fundamental weakness of the Kyoto approach."
- SAPA
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