Asia Pacific Economic Forum to climate change and economic recovery

 

Ministers from the 21 countries that make up the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) bloc called on governments to tear down barriers to trade in green technologies as part of its strategy to curb the rise in carbon emissions.

 

At the end of a two-day APEC Ministerial meeting, they vowed to tackle man-made climate change through its sustainable growth agenda. 'Anthropogenic climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing the world,' they said in a communique.

 

The statement comes ahead of a summit of APEC Leaders on 14 and 15 November that will be chaired by US President Barack Obama. He will meet with the heads of major emerging economies including President Hu Jintao of China and President Yudhoyono of Indonesia.

 

Obama will hold a bilateral meeting with President Hu in Beijing on 17 November. The US President will also visit Japan, Korea in the course of a high-profile nine-day Asian tour.

 

APEC is made up of 21* countries including the US and Russia as well as the largest and fast-growing emerging economies in the southern hemisphere.

 

It accounts for over half of all world trade and 60% of global GDP. The summit offers a key opportunity for the leaders of these countries to narrow their differences ahead of the start of the global climate change negotiations in Copenhagen next month.

 

Although the APEC leaders' summit is expected to focus primarily on economic recovery and reviving global trade, recent storms in Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines that have killed hundreds of people have put global warming on the agenda.

 

'Despite the distraction from the global economic crisis, APEC leaders are widely expected to call for further cuts in energy consumption amongst themselves at the Singapore meeting,' Leong Wai Ho, a senior regional economist at Barclays Capital in Singapore told Reuters.

 

Kim Carstensen, the head of conservation group WWF's global climate initiative, said a focus by APEC members on green investments would be a good way to tackle both the economic and climate crises. 'If you want to push the economy into gear again a very good way to do that would be through green investments because they normally imply a lot of jobs,' she said.

 

In their communique, APEC Ministers said that the bloc's response to the challenge of climate challenge would include improved access for Environmental Goods and Services (EGS), development of EGS sectors within APEC economies, enhancing energy efficiency and sustainable forest management and rehabilitation.

 

'The EGS market has a key role to play in fostering sustainable growth and advancing efforts to combat climate change,' they said. They said many climate-friendly technologies and goods were already commercially available and that more are expected to be commercialised soon.

 

'These technologies will benefit from trade liberalization,' they said. 'The World Bank has estimated that the removal of barriers for trade in four basic clean energy technologies - wind, solar, clean coal, and efficient lighting - alone could boost their trade by as much as 13%.'

 

They agreed to:

 

• explore ways to reduce existing barriers to trade and investment, and refrain from introducing new barriers in EGS;
• facilitate the diffusion of climate-friendly and other EGS technologies through economic and technical cooperation and capacity building; and
• advance work on sharing best practices in energy efficiency, with a view to deploy cleaner and more efficient technologies in power generation, industry, transportation, and residential and commercial buildings.

 

They noted that Japan would host the 9th APEC Energy Ministers Meeting in 2010, which would be an opportunity to explore diversified approaches to clean energy production and use.

 

*APEC's 21 Member Economies are Australia; Brunei Darussalam; Canada; Chile; People's Republic of China; Hong Kong, China; Indonesia; Japan; Republic of Korea; Malaysia; Mexico; New Zealand; Papua New Guinea; Peru; The Republic of the Philippines; The Russian Federation; Singapore; Chinese Taipei; Thailand; United States of America; Viet Nam.

 

Related links

APEC

APEC Communique

PREVIEW - Climate takes back seat at APEC, focus on trade, Reuters 11 November 2009

Transcript of Lars Løkke Rasmussen at the Climate Session