Singapore - Amid warnings that Asia will bear the brunt of the impact of drastic climate change, environmentalists are calling on the region's leaders to do more than issue rhetorical declarations in the fight against global warming. Leaders of 16 countries, led by the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), have agreed to increase the region's forest cover, promote the use of renewable energy sources and protect marine ecosystems in Singapore.
But activists lamented that the leaders' declarations on environment and climate change during the ASEAN and East Asian Summits in Singapore were empty rhetoric that do not commit countries to action.
Athena Ballesteros, a climate campaigner with international environment watchdog Greenpeace, singled out ASEAN in expressing disappointment over the region's lackluster efforts to address global warming.
She noted that the ASEAN Declaration on Environmental Sustainability, which the leaders signed on Tuesday, "does not communicate the scale and ambition of the need for governments to act with regards to climate change."
"There is no turning back," she said. "We know more than enough to act. But instead of talking about real solutions, the leaders continue to talk about false solutions such as clean fossil fuels and nuclear energy."
Ballesteros said ASEAN should be adopting targets, developing clean energy resources and abandoning coal or nuclear technologies.
She noted the ASEAN - which groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar - is home to abundant alternative energy resources that should be tapped.
In the declaration, ASEAN leaders expressed concern that environmental degradation and worsening global warming could jeopardize the region's robust development, and called for greater cooperation and stronger commitments to address negative impacts.
The group agreed "to collectively work towards achieving an aspirational goal of significantly increasing the cumulative forest cover in the ASEAN region by at least 10 million hectares by 2020."
The leaders also pledged to "forge ASEAN-wide cooperation to establish a regional nuclear safety regime" while acknowledging that "fossil fuels will continue to be part of the energy landscape" in the region.
ASEAN's declaration came after a new report, compiled by more than 35 developmental and environmental groups, warned that global warming was set to reverse decades of social and economic progress across Asia, home to more than 4 billion people or 60 per cent of the world's population.
According to the report, Up in Smoke: Asia and the Pacific, there is growing scientific consensus that all of Asia will warm during this century, and the results could be less less predictable rainfall and monsoons affecting the food supply.
It also warned that tropical cyclones such as the one that devastated Bangladesh last week would become more frequent and destructive.
Ballesteros said one positive step taken by ASEAN was its separate declaration on the Bali conference in December, when negotiations for a post-2012 agreement would be launched.
"That was a positive step and a welcome statement because we don't want to see the Bali conference become a mere talk fest," she said. "These statements must be coupled by action."
ASEAN leaders agreed to work closely "to pave the way for establishing an effective, fair, flexible and comprehensive multilateral arrangement in addressing climate change beyond 2012," when the Kyoto Protocol expires.
They also urged industrialized countries to continue in "substantially reducing their emissions" and to "further implement their commitments in the provision of financial resources, technology transfer and capacity building."
