Australia stood with US in climate debate

CANBERRA - Federal Environment Minister Robert Hill yesterday admitted that Australia helped the United States to argue for a sticking point which helped to collapse the world climate change talks in The Hague.

"Certainly the US position on forest management as a new major additional [carbon] sink was difficult for, in particular, the Europeans," said Hill, "but they do have a strong scientific argument for their position.

"And additionally you have got to have the US in the loop if you are going to get a worthwhile global outcome to climate change.

"So we certainly helped the US put their argument."

Prime Minister John Howard on Sunday had refused to accept environmentalists' charges that Australia was partially to blame for the failure to reach agreement.

Hill said the US argument on carbon sinks, where tree planting is counted as an anti-greenhouse measure because it soaks up carbon dioxide, was accepted in principle. The sticking point was the detail of the US plan.

The US had wanted to claim credit for carbon sinks as a major plank of the world bid to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, which are blamed for global warming.

Hill said he spent last Friday night and Saturday negotiating at the meeting in The Hague, where hundreds of world environment leaders had gathered after three years of preparations in the hope of securing a binding climate agreement.



"We compromised a great deal. In fact we got very close to an agreement," Hill said.

"I chaired a meeting in the early hours of the morning between, in particular, the US and the European Union.

"But the European Union at the last minute found that it just went too far for them.

"We acknowledged to each other that we've gone a long way but we've still got a way to go."

Hill agreed that Australia needed to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions and had committed $A350 million ($463.6 million) up-front to renewable energy projects, with more measures on the way.

The next meeting will be held in June.

Meanwhile, Britain yesterday blamed France for the embarrassing collapse of the talks.

British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott criticised his French counterpart, Dominique Voynet, saying she had got "cold feet" over the proposal. She said it was a "bad agreement" that would have been wrong to accept.



British junior environment minister Michael Meacher said there was still hope for progress towards implementing a pact reached in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, calling for a 5 per cent average cut in developed nations' 1990 levels of emissions by 2010.

- REUTERS and AGENCIES