Pacific Rim Nations Adopt Nonbinding Emissions Targets

By TIM JOHNSTON

Published: September 10, 2007

SYDNEY, Australia, Sept. 9 — The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting here limped to a close on Sunday, with a heavily compromised agreement on tackling climate change and few answers on how to advance the global trade agenda.

At the top of the agenda at this year’s meeting of the Pacific Rim group — whose 21 countries include the United States, China, Russia, Australia and Indonesia — were global warming and the stalemate that has paralyzed the trade talks that began in Doha, Qatar, in 2001. On both fronts, there was only limited success.

“The world needs to slow, stop and then reverse the growth of global greenhouse-gas emissions,” the leaders said in a joint statement on the climate.

But the agreement sets no timetable for stemming the increase in carbon dioxide emissions after 2012. That is when the binding terms of the Kyoto Protocol — the treaty adopted by most industrialized countries, but rejected by the United States and Australia — expires.

The APEC leaders hope that by 2030, for every 1 percent of growth in national output, the increase in carbon dioxide emissions will be held to 0.75 percent.

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