Sydney, Australia – Pacific Rim leaders agreed Saturday to curb global warming by improving energy use and expanding forests, laying out a plan that they hope will influence future climate talks but that critics dismissed as too timid.
President Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin, China’s Hu Jintao and leaders of other Asia-Pacific economies adopted the program at an annual summit after officials struck a deal between richer and developing nations over targets.
The program’s centerpieces are two modest goals – one on energy efficiency, the other on forests. Unlike the contentious U.N.-backed Kyoto Protocol, it does not set targets on the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause global warming, and its goals are voluntary.
Yet in bringing together the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit’s disparate countries on a contentious issue, the program may carry weight in upcoming talks in Washington, New York and Indonesia for a post-Kyoto blueprint.
And unlike Kyoto, which largely exempted developing countries from targets, China has signed on to APEC’s goals.
A demonstration that activist groups called for – and that authorities warned could be violent – mostly fizzled in the presence of a show of force by police and threats of arrest.
About 3,000 demonstrators held a festive, mostly peaceful rally, protesting against Bush, the Iraq war and APEC’s pro- business policies. Police arrested 17 protesters, while two officers were injured.
