APEC Draft Climate Statement a Compromise - Delegate
Date: 10-Sep-07
Country: AUSTRALIA
Author: Jalil Hamid
But the climate statement, which has emerged after tough
negotiations following a split between developing and developed
members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum,
remains to be agreed to by the 21 Asia-Pacific leaders.
"Its a compromise statement," an Asian delegate at the APEC
Sydney forum told Reuters, adding it reaffirms the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change and backs "aspirational
targets", proposed by Australia.
"Clearly the countries got what they wanted in the draft."
Host Australian Prime Minister John Howard placed climate
change at the top of the APEC agenda, seeking a post-Kyoto
Protocol consensus to be called the "Sydney Declaration".
Green groups have said the APEC leaders' summit would be a
failure if it did not agree to binding greenhouse gas reduction
targets, but Howard has said no binding targets will be set.
Howard has pushed for "aspirational targets" and for each
nation to set their own climate change goals.
Developing economies -- including China -- are strongly
opposed to any wording that commits them to binding targets and
some say they would prefer climate change goals be handled at a
UN meeting later this month.
Howard's friend and strong ally US President George W.
Bush has said in Sydney he is prepared to support a strong
leaders' statement on climate change and urged China, a
developing nation and a major polluter, so do the same.
Both Australia and the United States say Kyoto, which sets
binding greenhouse reduction targets, is flawed because it does
not include major polluters China and India.
Both Howard and Bush have said at APEC that China and India
must be included in any climate change
The draft climate statement will go up to APEC leaders when
they begin their two day summit on Saturday.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said that
negotiations on the APEC climate statement were "very
difficult".
"If we can get a good declaration out of this, that will be
a very great achievement," Downer told reporters earlier on
Friday. "But I make no predictions about how those negotiations
will go."
Under APEC's consensus-based approach, any statement on
climate change would be non-binding and it would be up to
member countries' decision on whether to meet the targets.
