Four years after taking a stand alongside the US in refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, Australia has signalled its willingness to shift on its environment policy.
“The reality is that we can only make meaningful global greenhouse gas reductions if effective action is taken by all the major emitting countries,” Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell said.
Mounting scientific research has pointed to the impact atmospheric pollution is having on the environment, from the melting of Alpine and Himalayan glaciers to the erosion of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets.
“Winters are growing milder, summers hotter and more severe, there is plant life where before there was none; there is water where before there was ice. Our permafrost is thawing and releasing methane gas into the atmosphere,” Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said in an address to the conference.
“It’s time to join with the international community and get down to work, to show leadership, and especially its’ the time to take action because only together can we make real progress.”
Ministers from 189 countries and organisations are meeting in Montreal this week to discuss the future of global commitments to tackling the problem of rising world temperatures when the Kyoto agreement expires in 2012.
Kyoto, an offshoot of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, sets targets for industrialised countries to reduce carbon-based gas production – a key factor in the ‘greenhouse effect’ in which gases act as a blanket trapping in the Sun’s heat.
But the protocol is criticised for not going far enough and only a few dozen industrial nations have signed up.
Most notable among those who have not signed is the US, the world’s biggest carbon-emissions polluter.
Big developing countries such as China, Brazil and India are fast catching up to the US, but have also been left out of Kyoto's targets.
The US has said it is not willing to submit to legal caps on emission production as this would be too costly to America’s economy.
However, the Canadian leader argued that the cost of not committing would be far greater.
“To all those countries that are still reticent, including the United States, I want to say this: We have a global conscience and now it is time to listen to that conscience,” Mr Martin said.
Next month Australia is to host the inaugural Asia-Pacific ‘partnership’ against climate change, which will bring together Australia, the US, China, India, Japan and South Korea.
“This critical partnership will work practically and collaboratively to accelerate development and deployment of clean and low-emissions technologies and share best practices on clean development and climate,” the Australian environment minister said.
Green groups, though, have expressed concerns that a break-away partnership outside the global forum may well serve to subvert international objectives such as those contained in the Kyoto Protocol.
The US Under-Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs, Paula Dobriansky, begs to differ, telling a news conference that “one size does not fit all.”
“We believe that the best approach and the best way forward is one that takes into account diversified approaches and differing opinions.”