Six-Nation Climate
Change Meeting Likely Delayed
October 12, 2005 — By Reuters
CANBERRA — A six-nation meeting to
combat global warming is unlikely to be held in November as planned and
Australia is aiming to host the talks at the end of this year or early
2006, Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said on Tuesday.
The Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate between
Australia, the United States, Japan, India, South Korea and China was
unveiled in July with an aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by
developing energy technology.
Officials in Canberra said the talks were due to be held in November,
but attempts to coordinate foreign, environment and energy ministers
from the six nations to attend the meeting in the southern Australian
city of Adelaide had proved difficult.
"I wouldn't be expecting it in November, it will be late this year or
early next year," Macfarlane told reporters. "We have to fit in with
five other governments and obviously it's important that the date suits
as many as those as possible."
Macfarlane, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Environment Minister
Ian Campbell will meet shortly to draft a programme for the meeting of
the partnership, which grew from a brainstorming meeting of 20 countries
on climate change in Britain at the start of the year.
According to figures to be released by the partnership, the six founding
partners of the new pact account for 45 percent of the world's
population, 48 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and 48
percent of the world's energy consumption.
The pact, dubbed "beyond Kyoto", has been described as complimentary to
the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions that the United States
and Australia have refused to ratify.
Both nations say Kyoto could threaten economic growth and that excluding
large developing nations such as China and India from meeting emissions
targets didn't make sense.
Officials from 150 nations meet in Canada next month to discuss how to
take the Kyoto pact beyond 2012, when its first phase ends.
The pact, which came into force this year, obliges only developed
nations to meet emissions targets while developing nations, including
big polluters China and India, are excluded until at least 2012.
Asia-Pacific partnership pact members say cleaner technology is a better
way to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that
many scientists blame for rising global temperatures.
Source: Reuters |