PHILLIPINES:Leaders from 16 Asian nations, representing half the world's population, pledged yesterday to develop alternative energy supplies and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The agreement capped a week of high-level meetings on the Philippine resort island of Cebu that waded into issues as diverse as disease, disaster, trade and terrorism.
Southeast Asian leaders along with the heads of China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand held their second east Asia summit in a more purposeful manner after last year's inaugural meeting.
Beijing and Tokyo used the forum sponsored by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to further mend ties.
The 16 leaders urged North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons and respond to humanitarian concerns, including abductions of Japanese in previous decades.
But while northeast Asian diplomacy featured at the summit, its centrepiece was an energy security pact that seeks to reduce the region's dependence on costly imported crude and help stave off climate change.
Most of the goals in the pact are vague or voluntary, however. And unlike the European Union, which last week unveiled ambitious energy proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 per cent, the leaders of some of the most polluted countries on the planet offered no concrete targets.
New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark said the comparison was not entirely apt. "This is very early days in the east Asia context, to be talking about targets," she said. The EU has commitments to cut emission under the Kyoto protocol, while many of the east Asian countries have not signed up to the accord.
Heavy emphasis was put on promoting biofuels that use plantation crops such as sugar or palm oil as feed stock - not surprising since these are huge export commodities in southeast Asia.
But there is no doubt about the magnitude of the problem facing these countries. Greenhouse gas emissions are expected to triple in southeast Asia by 2030, while demand for energy will double during that period, according to Asean data.
The head of the Asian Development Bank, Haruhiko Kuroda, urged east Asian countries to create a vast trade bloc from India to New Zealand to pull 750 million of their three billion citizens out of dire poverty.
Officials at the summit said that while the idea was being studied, any such bloc was far into the future, if at all, and Asean's priority was to sign free trade agreements with individual countries represented at the summit.
Both Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and China's premier Wen Jiabao are vying to influence Asean as it becomes a more integrated political and economic bloc.
Mr Abe highlighted Tokyo's desire to play a more prominent security role in the region by agreeing to support southeast Asian maritime security.
China and Asean agreed on Sunday to slash barriers on trade in services, which Mr Wen said was a "crucial step" towards creating the world's most populous free trade area. - (Reuters)