Climate change a peculiar APEC focus
Karon Snowdon asks why John Howard chose to make climate change the number one priority to headline the final statement to come from the APEC summit.

There have been a lot of positive headlines for Australia's Prime Minister John Howard this week.

He's hosting 21 leaders for the APEC summit - including the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the US, China, Indonesia, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and the South East Asian nations. Taiwan also sends a representative.

John Howard who is facing an election before the end of this year, hopes his falling popularity with voters will receive a boost from APEC and improve the chances of a win for his coalition government.

Some of the agreements and business deals announced during APEC could be helpful.

There's the 35 billion dollar deal signed with China for the sale of natural gas, not to mention the new annual security dialogue , announced with President Hu Jintao, China's first with a western nation.

Australia is also boosting security ties with its closest ally the United States, its selling more uranium to Russia and Indonesia is talking up the chances of a bilateral free trade agreement.

And all that's before the real leaders summit actually begins.

It raises the question of why John Howard chose to make climate change the number one priority to headline the final statement to come from the summit?

Mr Howard is a very late supporter of the need to act on climate change. His government is one of only two non-signatories - the other is the United States, to the Kyoto Protocol.

He has repeatedly criticised Kyoto for letting developing countries off the hook by not binding them to emission control targets as it does for industrial nations.

He rejects the argument that rich nations should take more historical responsibility for global warming and bear more of the cost of the solution at least for now.

To point this out is not a criticism - but merely a statement of fact.

The other is the nature of APEC itself...its a consensus based talking shop that deals primarily with economic and trade issues. It represents every size and shape of economy and stage of development, a point its members often make whenever a contentious issue is relegated to the too hard basket.

Besides, the United Nations deals with the international agreements on climate change.

China's President Hu Jintao pointed that out quite strongly in his press conference at APEC - that the UN should remain the peak body for setting international climate change goals.

Most significantly he added developing nations should continue to receive softer targets in any future agreement. Several other APEC members appear to hold the same view.

John Howard was realistic enough to know beforehand that no firm targets could be set by APEC when he talked of aspirational goals… nor does he want binding targets, unless they are applied across the board.

Its doubtful he will even have influenced any of the entrenched opposition to binding targets for developing nations from countries like China.

The best John Howard can expect from APEC is a motherhood statement about the urgency of dealing with climate change.

The leaders will then turn their attention to the many other meetings around the world preparing for the next agreement or several agreements to be finalised via the UN to replace the Kyoto protocol when it expires in 2012.

We can only speculate on how well thought out John Howard's plan was when he nominated climate change as this APEC meeting's trademark issue. Whatever the final statement says it won’t be enough.

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