The USA, together with China, India, and three other Asia-Pacific nations, on 28 July signed a joint energy and climate pact which they say has the potential to significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
The announcement came as a surprise in Brussels where it emerged that senior staff, and even Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas himself, learned about the initiative in the press. It comes as a setback for the Commission, which is currently trying to build an international consensus on future climate action after 2012 that includes major emerging economies such as China and India (see related LinksDossier).
The pact is a non-binding agreement largely based on technology transfers between the six signatories - the USA, China, India, Australia, Japan and South Korea. It was officially unveiled in the margins of the meeting of the ASEAN countries at Vientiane, Laos.
Signatories account for about half of the world's global GDP, population, energy use, and greenhouse emissions. As the countries were making the official announcement at a press conference on 28 July, Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said that "our collaboration can make a significant impact".
The agreement is the first of its kind to include the USA and China, the world's two largest emitters of greenhouse gases responsible for man-made global warming.
"It is very clear to me that it is vital to be able to build on mutual interests of developed and developing countries together if one is going to take on global challenges," said Deputy Secretary Robert Zoellick at a press conference.
The 'vision statement' unveiled by the group of six nations explicitly recognises that initiatives to be taken under the pact will come as a complement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change and will not seek to replace it. It also states that initiatives would have to be consistent with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
But contrary to the Kyoto Protocol, the vision statement does not list formal commitments nor does it oblige signatories to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a legally-binding manner.
The scope of the arrangements is still to be defined but will chiefly focus on the development and roll-out of technologies. These include the whole range of existing and emerging technologies including energy efficiency, renewables, hydrogen, biotechnologies and nuclear fission.
"We will consider establishing a framework for the partnership, including institutional and financial arrangements and ways to include other interested and like-minded countries," said the statement.
The pact follows the launch of discussions this year on how to take the fight against climate change to the next stage, after 2012 and the expiry of the targets agreed under the Kyoto Protocol.
