Climate Change to Dominate APEC Summit
Pastor Dale Morgan
Climate Change to Dominate APEC Summit*
By GILLIAN WONG
The Associated Press
Wednesday, July 25, 2007; 2:40 PM
SINGAPORE -- Crafting a regional response to climate change will top the
agenda at a summit of Asia-Pacifc leaders in September, but they are
unlikely to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution, an official said
Wednesday.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who will chair the annual Asia
Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Sydney, has placed climate change
at the top of the agenda during the Sept. 8-9 summit.
The United States has said it wants an in-principle global agreement on
climate change that does not harm economic development to emerge from
the summit.
Howard has asked his APEC counterparts to consider ways in which the
forum can support an "emerging, practical consensus on a global
framework for tackling climate change," said Colin Heseltine, executive
director of the APEC secretariat.
"It seems it is most unlikely that there will be a single,
silver-bullet, one-size-fits-all solution," Heseltine told a lunch
gathering organized by the Australian Chamber of Commerce in Singapore.
"Individual countries will want to devise their own approaches in
accordance with their own particular circumstances, albeit as part of
some larger global framework."
The 21-member APEC grouping includes the world's two largest greenhouse
gas emitters _ the United States and China, which together will soon
generate half of global emissions _ as well as Indonesia, which by some
estimates is the third largest.
"My personal gut feeling is we're not looking at some new APEC-based
climate change organization. It's really a question of using the APEC
approach to build consensus," Heseltine said.
Howard is pushing a strategy to fight global warming that avoids setting
pollution emission targets, saying countries such as China and India
would balk at any measures that challenge their economic booms.
Australia _ one of the world's worst polluters per capita _ and the
United States are the only fully industrialized countries that have
refused to accept the goals of an international agreement known as the
Kyoto protocol for greenhouse gas emission targets.
Instead, Howard has proposed a model in which countries set their own
objectives in a range of areas that effect climate change, and review
their own progress.
A related issue, energy security, is another key topic to be addressed
at the summit, Heseltine said. APEC's economies account for two-thirds
of global energy demand and include the world's four largest energy
consumers, as well as some major energy producers. Across the group,
energy demand is expected to double by 2030, Heseltine said.
APEC comprises Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong,
Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru,
South Korea, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the
United States and Vietnam.