New U.S.-led climate pact gets cold reception

Stevie Emilia, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Local environmentalists have given a cold reception to the U.S.- led plan to develop clean energy technologies to curtail climate- changing pollution, referring to the plan on Friday as an old initiative and a way of avoiding "real" emission reduction efforts.

Senior policy advisor of environmentalist group Pelangi, Agus P. Sari, said he was not surprised by the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate pact.

A technology fix, he added, had been the U.S. stance before and after the Kyoto Protocol -- the legally binding treaty to cut emissions that came into force in February this year -- which it refuses to sign and continues to do so.

He said that since June 2001, the U.S. had launched bilateral partnerships with countries including Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea on issues ranging from climate-change science to energy and sequestration technologies to policy approaches, and to exploring methodologies for monitoring and measuring greenhouse-gas emissions.

"This (pact), I believe, is just stating an old initiative," Agus said. "Is this a U.S. ploy (to undermine the Kyoto Protocol)? Or a a true pollution-combating policy? I think it's neither. As I said, it is just putting new paint on an old car. I will play down the impacts of it. A climate (change)-combating policy maybe, but it's hardly special. I won't see any impact of this on Kyoto."

The initiative was presented on Thursday at an Asia-Pacific security meeting in Laos attended by Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick among others, who insisted the pact was not "detracting" from the Kyoto Protocol but bolstering it.

The initiative brings together the U.S., Australia, China, India, South Korea and last-minute partner Japan with the aim of inventing and selling technologies ranging from "clean coal" and wind power to next-generation nuclear fission as a means of reducing pollution and addressing climate concerns.

However, critics noted the partnership was nonbinding and sets no targets for signatories to meet in reducing pollution, talking only about grandiose ideas.

On the other hand, the Kyoto Protocol, signed by 140 countries including Indonesia last year, is legally binding and requires countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a certain percentage.

The World Wide Fund for Nature's (WWF) climate and energy program coordinator for Indonesia Eka Melisa saw the pact as another attempt by the Bush and Howard administrations to draw attention away from the fact that their countries' emissions continued to rise and the need for them to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to bind them to putting into place real domestic emission reduction efforts.

She was also skeptical since the pact's vision statement contained no legally binding requirements to cut emissions -- only a voluntary action that would be carried out if national circumstances were conducive.

"For us, this is a proposed technology agreement that cannot be an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol since it does not say something about reducing greenhouse gas emissions," Eka said.

Indonesia benefits from the Protocol as it is not only about the reduction of emissions but also about coping with the impact of climate change as well as the transfer of clean technology. The country is also vulnerable in regard to climate change, which might pose risks to its coastal areas with sea levels rising.

"At this point we can't say what the new U.S.-led pact will mean to our country because details remain sketchy," Eka said.

Agus said the fact that Japan is a party to the pact makes it less detrimental to the Kyoto Protocol.

"In no way will Japan bluntly jeopardize Kyoto, and its involvement in the pact -- being the only Kyoto party among the industrialized countries in the pact -- undermines any impression that it is a Kyoto 'outsiders' club' competing with, or destroying, Kyoto," he said.

The U.S., which accounts for one-quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, and Australia have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, saying it would harm their economies by raising energy prices, and cost five million jobs in the U.S. alone.