Consensus or cover: Asia-Pacific leaders gamble on climate change

SYDNEY, Australia: The long days of hard bargaining that produced a climate change agreement are only the beginning for Pacific Rim leaders if they want to stick to their declaration to chart a new international course on global warming.

The modest, and critics say flawed, agreement approved over the weekend contained two initiatives for improving energy efficiency and planting more trees. It put aside targets for cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, like those in the contested Kyoto Protocol, the U.N. global warming pact.
But the program adopted by the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit set precedents that the United States, Japan and Australia say are important as the world grapples with climate change. Chiefly, China, which if not already the biggest polluter will be soon, agreed to a goal that also applies to rich countries.

“This is the first occasion ever that China … has agreed to any notion of targets at all for developing countries as well as developed countries,” Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told local television on Sunday. “That is, by the way, an enormous diplomatic breakthrough.”

These commitments will be tested as talks on a blueprint to replace Kyoto gear up with key meetings in the United States and Indonesia in the next three months. Bridging gaps between countries that support Kyoto and the U.S. which has rejected it and developing nations who see climate change as rich nations’ problem will be crucial.

International Herald Tribune