17 May 2006The Sydney Morning Herald
Countries including Canada were expressing interest in a US-led six-nation scheme to combat global warming set up after Washington rejected the UN's Kyoto Protocol, a US official said.
Even so, the administration of President George W Bush is struggling to secure a requested $US52 million ($A68.41 million) from Congress for 2007 to fund the scheme launched last year with Japan, China, India, Australia and South Korea.
"We've certainly had expressions of interest" from other nations, Harlan Watson, the senior US climate negotiator, said on the fringes of UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany.
He noted that Canada's new Conservative government had clearly expressed interest last month.
"I'm not sure of the whole range" of other countries expressing interest, he added, mentioning Singapore and Indonesia as possibles.
"I think at this point there is a wait-and-see attitude. We have to demonstrate success," he said of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.
The partnership favours voluntary measures to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases and a sharing of new clean technology like solar power or hydrogen. The six countries are among the top emitters of heat-trapping gases, led by the United States.
Kyoto is stricter by obliging about 40 rich nations to cut emissions from power plants, factories and cars as a step to brake rising temperatures that may trigger wrenching changes such as desertification, more powerful storms and rising seas.
Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, saying that its caps would harm the US economy and that the scheme was unfair for excluding developing nations from a first period of reductions until 2012.
The Bush administration is seeking a total of $US52 million ($A68.41 million) in funds for the six-nation partnership for 2007, mostly $US30 million ($A39.47 million) from the State Department and with smaller amounts for other agencies.
Of the total so far, Watson said a House appropriations committee did not approve a $US5 million ($A6.58 million) request for the Environmental Protection Agency and that an energy sub-committee budget did not back a $US15 million ($A19.73 million) request.
"It is very difficult traditionally for domestic agencies to get funding for international initiatives. This is not unusual," Watson said, adding that there was still a long way to go before a final budget was agreed.
"The shortfall will not be helpful but we will do the best we can," he said, adding that "We're very encouraged by the interest in the private sector."
Watson also said that evidence for global warming seemed to be getting stronger but that there was still great uncertainty about how a warming would affect the planet.
"In these settings there tends to be only an emphasis that 'everything is going to be worse everywhere'. There are undoubtedly going to be areas where things are going to get better," he said.
Some cold regions, for instance, might become suitable for crops. Watson said that computer modelling efforts should try to judge the impact of climate change on smaller regions.
