Climate change momentum fading: Asia-Pacific survey

Shaun Tandon Yahoo News 19 Nov 08;

LIMA (AFP) – Climate change is fading as a priority in the Pacific Rim as the gloomy state of the global economy takes precedence, a survey of opinion leaders showed Wednesday.

The private Pacific Economic Cooperation Council released an annual survey of leaders in government, business and media ahead of a summit in Peru of 21 Asia-Pacific nations, which account for more than half the global economy.

Twenty-four percent of some 400 opinion leaders surveyed said the top priority for Asia-Pacific leaders should be addressing the US-bred financial crisis, far outweighing other issues.

Last year, the top priority was reviving stalled global trade negotiations, at 12 percent, but climate change came close at eight percent. Global warming did not even figure among the top priorities this year.

"We've been swamped by bad economic news and you don't have to look at our survey results alone to see that the interest and focus on climate change has dissipated somewhat," said Yuen Pau Woo, co-author of the report.

"You see the same shift in focus in the public away from climate change questions to questions of economic survival and growth," said Woo, president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

The survey was released a day after US president-elect Barack Obama pledged to engage the world on climate change, which UN scientists warn threatens extinction for many species by the end of the century.

George W. Bush, the outgoing US president, was the industrialized world's main holdout from the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that mandatory cuts in carbon emissions blamed for global warming were too costly for the US economy.

With Bush's departure, nations are racing to meet a deadline of December 2009 to draft a new treaty on obligations for the period after 2012, when Kyoto's obligations expire.

The survey also found that 78 percent of opinion leaders predicted the United States would suffer much weaker growth in the coming year and that a US recession was the main risk for the region.

Compared with previous years, the Pacific Rim was less worried about high energy and food prices and the risk of conflict between China and Taiwan, the survey said.

Cross-strait tensions have eased dramatically since Taiwan elected Beijing-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou in March. China claims Taiwan, where China's nationalists fled in 1949 after losing the mainland's civil war.

Foreign and trade ministers were holding talks on Wednesday in Lima ahead of the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

In the survey, only 25 percent wanted APEC to create new institutions and few expected quick action on creating a regional free-trade zone or common currency.

More important, the survey said, was ensuring a flow of liquidity during the financial crisis and preventing the so-called "spaghetti bowl effect" of competing regulations.