US: The US appeared poised yesterday to forge an agreement with several Asian nations on climate change which would strengthen its attempts to sideline the United Nations-brokered Kyoto protocol.
Ian Campbell, Australian environment minister, confirmed Canberra was working on a regional proposal to combat climate change but refused to be drawn on details. Australia and the US are the only developed countries to have rejected the Kyoto treaty, which requires developed countries to reduce their output of greenhouse gases by 2012.
Mr Campbell said: "We've been working on bilateral and multilateral arrangements on 'beyond Kyoto' for the past 12 months. We will be announcing any future proposals in the very near future."
He hinted that developing countries would be a key part of the initiative. "The main aim of effective action to reduce greenhouse gases is to involve developing countries, who have legitimate needs to increase their energy use, but also we need to find the answer to the global imperative of reducing emissions," he said.
China, India and other developing nations account for a rapidly rising share of emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide but are not required to cut their emissions under the Kyoto treaty, an arrangement the US has branded unfair.
A deal between the US and Australia, China and India would intensify pressure on the European Union, Canada and Japan - the strongest proponents of the Kyoto protocol - to gain better backing among poorer nations. Robert Zoellick, US deputy secretary of state, is expected to discuss the climate change agreement at the meeting in Laos today of the Association of South-East Asian Nations. The next stage of talks on the protocol are in Montreal in November. Much discussion is likely to focus on the role of developing countries and the future of the treaty after 2012, when its provisions expire.
In contrast to the Kyoto protocol's requirement to cut emissions, the US-Asian agreement is likely to focus on technological remedies for climate change, such as alternative fuel sources and ways of preventing carbon dioxide from reaching the atmosphere, where it causes climate change.