The Sydney Declaration, signed on 9 September by the 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) members, includes an "APEC-wide regional aspirational goal" to reduce the energy intensity of Pacific-rim economies by 25% by 2030.
The declaration also includes calls to increase the region's forest cover by 20 million hectares, to advance the development and use of "clean" coal and carbon storage technologies, and to promote trade in environmental goods and services.
APEC members, which include China, the US, Japan, Australia and Russia, account for 41% of the world's population and 60% of its energy use, with China a major contributor to both figures.
Jim Connaughton, environmental advisor to the White House, called the declaration a "good foundation for future discussions".
But critics of the declaration say that its non-binding nature dooms it to failure, since there is little pressure on governments to follow-up on the targets. Greenpeace called the declaration "business as usual", and Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown criticised it as being "vacuous".
Differences of opinion between APEC members also became clear during the summit.
China, which successfully pushed for the inclusion of a reference to the UN as the "appropriate multilateral forum for international negotiations on climate change" (EurActiv 07/09/07), remained opposed to any kind of binding targets for energy efficiency, dashing hopes by Australian Prime Minister John Howard that the Sydney Declaration could lay the basis for an international climate-change agreement outside of the UN framework.
Howard nonetheless hailed the agreement as "highly significant", and in an apparent concession by China, the declaration does not make specific mention of the Kyoto Protocol.
US President George W. Bush will host a meeting of major economies in Washington DC on 27-28 September, in advance of the December meeting of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia. Bush's meeting is designed to create momentum for a post-2012 climate-change agreement that emphasises technological development, energy efficiency and energy security, rather than binding emissions targets.
The EU supports the kind of binding emissions targets previously agreed under the Kyoto Protocol by most industrialised nations, except the US and Australia.
