The inaugural Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, initially expected in November, groups Australia, the United States, Japan, India, South Korea and China. The nations account for about 50 percent of global energy use and greenhouse gas emissions and their meeting would come weeks after a major climate change gathering in Canada.

Officials from 150 countries are set to attend the Montreal meeting to discuss how to take the Kyoto Protocol greenhouse pact beyond 2012, when its first phase ends.

Downer said the January meeting would look at ways to combat greenhouse gas emissions without hurting economic development, adding that commitments under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change were ineffective and would not work.

"We don't want to undercut Kyoto or try to circumvent Kyoto. I just want to make the point that Kyoto won't address climate change, I'm afraid. We may as well all face up to that," Downer told Australian parliament on Tuesday.

Australia has been a trenchant critic of the Kyoto Protocol and, along with the United States, has refused to sign up to emission targets for developed nations which aim to cut greenhouse emissions by 5.2 percent of 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

Downer said without Kyoto, global emissions would grow 41 percent by 2010 from 1990. But emissions would still grow by 40 percent if all signatories to the Kyoto Protocol met their emissions targets.

"It is just completely misleading to suggest that Kyoto is going to solve the problem of climate change," Downer said.

Foreign, environment and energy ministers from the six nations are due to attend the meeting.

The partnership, which grew from a brainstorming meeting of 20 countries on climate change in Britain at the start of the year, was unveiled at a Southeast Asia forum in Laos.

Australia's environment minister said on Monday negotiating new greenhouse gas emission levels for the Kyoto Protocol was a waste of time, dampening hopes of a breakthrough at the Montreal meeting, which begins November 28.

Source:

Planet Ark