Archived press release

Asia-Pacific Partnership will fail to tackle climate change

10 January 2006

Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate - Sydney Meeting - 11-13 January

The postponed first meeting of the Asia-Pacific Partnership meeting - billed as tackling climate change - will take place in Sydney, Australia from 11-13 January with top officials from Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the US taking part [1]. But Friends of the Earth International said the meeting's focus on voluntary instead of compulsory measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions meant little was likely to be achieved [2].

The meeting was initially scheduled to take place last November, before the successful UN Climate Change Talks in Montreal, where agreement was reached on taking forward the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol.

But in a desperate attempt to revive the `Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate' meeting, the Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell declared the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change "dead", ignoring the progress made at the Montreal talks. Critics have accused the US and Australia, two of the world's biggest per capita polluters, of promoting the Partnership as a cynical diversion from progress made on the Protocol.

Friends of the Earth's International Climate Campaigner Catherine Pearce said:

"The Australian Government argues that this partnership will succeed where Kyoto has supposedly failed, but following the success in Montreal, Kyoto is alive and kicking like never before. It would seem that the Americans and Australians are pushing a dead duck.

"Voluntary measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions simply do not work. Without clear targets to drive market investment in sustainable technologies, little will be achieved. The Asia- Pacific partners should stop trying to reinvent the wheel and invest their energies in driving forward the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol instead."

Australia's climate spokesperson Stephanie Long added:

"Minister Campbell is purposefully misleading the Australian people and international community in a desperate bid to gain support for the meeting in Sydney. It is increasingly clear that the Asia Pacific partnership is a deal of no substance and is a distraction from the main event."

The Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, was announced in July 2005 and brings together Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the US, to look to develop technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions rather than setting specific targets to reduce them.

The partnership, established through secret talks, was led by Australia and the US. Neither country has signed the Kyoto Protocol. They are the only major global polluters not to take on legally binding targets. It is not yet clear which technologies are being considered in the partnership or if any new financial support will be available for their development.

Friends of the Earth International believes that both Australia and the American Administration are using this partnership to undermine efforts under Kyoto, deflecting attention away from their appalling inaction on climate change and to secure the coal markets in Asia on which their economies are increasingly dependent.

Notes

[1] US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, along with Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and presidential adviser James Connaughton planned to meet in Sydney, Australia, 11-13 January, with representatives from five Asian and Pacific nations. . However, Ms Rice cancelled her trip after Israeli President Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke.

Along with the US, these countries account for nearly half the world's population, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and economic output. According to 2003 figures - the US emits 6,900 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO₂-e), with emissions increasing by 13 per cent in the period between 1990 and 2003. Australia emitted 550 million tones of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2003.

See: www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/US-GHGEmissions90-04.pdf (PDF)
and: www.greenhouse.gov.au/inventory/

[2] Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate vision statement available at: www.state.gov/g/oes/rls/fs/50335.htm

Background information available at www.foe.org.au/climate

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust