Australia opened a climate change pact of six of the world's biggest polluters today.
The inaugural Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate meeting in Sydney aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions with the support of industry and without hindering economic growth.
But it also sets no targets on members to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases released by burning fossil fuels.
Critics say the partnership is short-sighted and doomed to fail because it imposes no targets on members - the United States, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea and India.
The six members, representing nearly half of the world's population, are responsible for about half the greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere, a figure likely to increase rapidly as the economies of China and India draw in vast amounts of coal, oil and gas.
Australian Prime Minister Mr John Howard said an economic and energy outlook, to be released by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics, showed clean development technology could cut greenhouse gas emissions from the six nations by 20 per cent by 2050.
But the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 1990 that stabilising carbon dioxide concentrations needed eventual emission reductions of 60-80 per cent.
Although the partnership has said it will complement - not compete - with the Kyoto Protocol, green groups described the Sydney talks as a sham aimed at subverting Kyoto, which obliges about 40 developed countries to cut their emissions by 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels during 2008-2012.
The United States and Australia refuse to sign Kyoto - whose members account for 35 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions - claiming its mandatory greenhouse gas cuts would threaten economic growth.
The six nations in the Asia Pacific Partnership believe voluntary industry-based targets can accelerate the development of cleaner more efficient technologies to cut pollution, while still promoting economic development, reducing poverty and enhancing energy security.