The emissions are said to cause global warming.

The Singapore Declaration on Climate Change, Energy and the Environment was all the more significant as it was signed by China and India, which have long resisted calls to join in efforts to tackle the problem.

Signalling the seriousness with which it views the issue, China went a step further and pledged to make more efficient use of energy - cutting its energy consumption for every dollar of gross domestic product by 20 per cent in five years - and said that it would hold a forum in Beijing next year on coping with climate change.

Japan, which has set an ambitious target of a 50 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050, also unveiled a US$2 billion (S$2.9 billion) aid package to help East Asia fight pollution and climate change over the next five years.

Other countries also pitched in with separate green initiatives. For its part, Singapore will host a forum on liveable cities, to showcase how cities can develop while protecting their environments, disclosed Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at a press conference yesterday to wrap up the past three days of back-to-back summit meetings.

The significance of yesterday's summit declaration on the environment was that it paves the way for the United Nations climate change meeting in Bali next month, when countries are set to begin tough negotiations for a new pact on limiting greenhouse gases when the present Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

The declaration was signed yesterday by 16 countries - Asean, along with India, China, South Korea, Australia, Japan and New Zealand - and will set the stage for further negotiations with a wider circle.

'It...makes the Bali meeting easier than it would have been otherwise,' said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, adding that getting China and India to agree to taking action on stabilising, then reducing emissions of carbon dioxide was 'essential'.

According to sources involved in the four-month negotiations, while all parties were reluctant to have concrete targets, all - except India - eventually relented.

But because of objections from India, an 'aspirational goal' for the region to make more efficient use of energy - by at least 25 per cent by 2030 - was replaced by a more vague pledge to work for a 'significant reduction'.

Noting this yesterday, Mr Lee said that developing countries like Indonesia, India and China had made 'eloquent presentations of why, for them, economic development is a priority, overriding imperative'. Their concerns would have to be considered in any deal to succeed Kyoto.

'Climate change has to be addressed, but they cannot afford to leave people in absolute poverty as still remains the case amongst some proportion of their population.'

But, Mr Lee said, India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had indicated that he may be willing to match caps on emissions per capita made by developed countries, and bring those down if developed countries did the same.

Mr Singh had added that the greenhouse gas emissions for each person in India were lower than the amount of pollution that the average person in developed countries produced.

Australia's Mr Downer said he is 'optimistic' that progress will be made.

'I think there's a turning of the tide. Now we are at last seeing these major developing countries saying, 'Yes, we need to do things as well'...Of course, they want the developed countries to do a lot, and that's understandable and that's acceptable,'' he said.

arti@sph.com.sg

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