Climate summit challenges Kyoto's approach

Don Henry adds that without targets and national legislation, the new pact would disadvantage progressive companies as no one else would bear the costs.

"Also, voluntary methods rely on public subsidies - taxpayers will pay a bomb rather than the polluters," he adds.

Many scientists say the emission of CO2 and five other gases are responsible for rising temperatures on the earth. The average global temperature rose around one degree centigrade in the 20th century.

Some projections suggest that Australia's annual temperature could rise between one and six degrees centigrade by 2070. A recent government report says it may already be too late to save some of the country's environmental landmarks such as the Great Barrier Reef, from the effects of the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Both the US and Australia had earlier refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on the grounds that it cost jobs - about 5 million in the US alone. They also said that it was too lenient on developing nations such as China and India.

Neither China nor India are targets bound by Kyoto to cut greenhouse gases during the agreement's first stage, set to end in 2012. It was agreed that the emerging Asian powers needed economic space to grow, and that those nations most responsible for the current level of pollution - the developed nations - should shoulder the initial burden.

While businesses in the US and Australia have been split in recent years over the Kyoto Protocol, the new pact has brought more businesses along. Gerry Hueston, the president of the oil group BP and a senior member of the Business Council of Australia, has asked fellow council members to adopt plans to cut greenhouse gases. This week will bring to the table many industry representatives from companies such as Exxon Mobil and the mining firm Rio Tinto.

But some experts here say that both Australia and the US are playing the politics of divide and rule in an effort to weaken Kyoto and take along some of the key polluters such as India and China.

With the first stage of Kyoto coming to an end in 2012, and with only 20 percent of emission reduction covered by 2020, the European Union had been working hard to get agreement from the Group of 77 developing nations for future actions to balance the pressure on the rest of the developed world.

"I don't believe that India and China are about to leave Kyoto, but maybe the long-term hope is that they will," says Colin Butler of the Australian National University.

The US and Australia deny that they are trying to undermine the Kyoto accord, insisting instead that the new grouping is meant to compliment it.

Mr. Henry says that Kyoto for all its problems has a fairness mechanism built into it and a majority of the developing countries that are a part of it are benefiting from the market-based mechanisms.

One of India's foremost environmentalists, Sunita Narain, says that India acquiesced to this new group meeting in Sydney because it is vulnerable to global warming. "This country's majority subsists at the margins of survival; any variation in climate can throw India off that edge."

Other than the introduction of the pact in Laos last year and the release of a vision statement, there has been little in the way of detail about the agreement.

"We welcome the initiative, but we have no idea how the architecture of the agreement will work," Mark O' Neill head of the Australian Coal Association, said recently.

Mr. Campbell warned against expecting the first summit to produce a "silver bullet" to the climate change problem.

"Ultimately the test of the success of this partnership will be over a number of years," Campbell told ABC radio.

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