By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: January 15, 2007
CEBU, Philippines: Leaders from 16 Asian nations signed an energy security accord Monday that they said would reduce the region’s dependence on fossil fuels and promote the use of alternative energy sources.
Leaders from 16 Asian nations signed an energy security accord Monday that they said would reduce the region’s dependence on fossil fuels and promote the use of alternative energy sources.
Japan, one of the signatories, pledged $2 billion in aid to Asian countries to improve energy efficiency and adopt technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The East Asia summit meeting also gave a tentative endorsement to a Japanese proposal for a pan-Asian free trade zone that would include India, Australia and New Zealand, apparently overcoming Chinese resistance to the idea.
At the first East Asia summit meeting in Kuala Lumpur in December 2005, China proposed to exclude the three countries from the Asian trade zone, arguing that their economies were not compatible. Japan has agreed to pay for a study of the proposal, which, if carried out, would unify and lower tariffs in a region encompassing about half of the world’s population.
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The 16 countries to be included in the free trade zone are China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, India, Thailand, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.
“China and Japan now see it in their national interests to play a more active role” in bringing about the Asian free trade area, Malcolm Cook, program director for Asia and the Pacific at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, said, according to Bloomberg News.
Helen Clark, prime minister of New Zealand, said that country would vigorously support the proposal. “This will be a very, very significant bloc,” she said.
The Cebu Declaration on East Asian Energy Security, announced Monday, set a wide range of goals, including a promise to “mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through effective policies and measures.”
But environmentalists in the region have said the pact offers no meaningful targets and compares poorly with the European Union’s new energy policy, unveiled last week, which calls for a 20 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions over 13 years.
“Any serious attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has goals and time frames, and this hasn’t,” said Senator Christine Milne of the Greens party of Australia. “In my view, it’s just business as usual for coal exports to China.”
Aside from the $2 billion in Japanese aid announced by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, there was no discussion of how a move toward greener energy production would be funded. The declaration set no specific spending targets for the development of alternative energy sources, a fundamental requirement for reducing dependence on imported oil.
The declaration urges Asian countries to “consider” the use of hydropower, nuclear power and biofuels like ethanol but concedes that “fossil fuels underpin our economies and will be an enduring reality in our lifetimes.”
While Asean produces 11 percent of the world’s oil, it consumes 21 percent, making it as reliant on Middle East oil imports as the United States.
Founded in 1967, Asean is composed of the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
This year’s summit meeting has been hailed by participants as more productive than usual, dispelling fears that the institution had become toothless and was drifting toward irrelevance.
“This year is more focused on substance,” Ong Keng Yong, the secretary general of Asean, said Monday.
“Last year was like a housewarming party. Everybody came and got to know each other.”
Tim Johnston contributed reporting from Sydney.
This is not in anyway connected to the main topic that you’ve written about. This is just a comment about the elitism pervading the political elections in our country. Hi! My name is Rummel Pinera. I’ve recently filed my certificate of candidacy as a “would-be candidate for the senate†at the Comelec. I did it not because I’m really serious in aspiring for such a position. I did it because I would like to experience the “feeling of being a political candidate†in a country where political election is really a bastion of elitism. Though I already know that political election in the Philippines is a bastion of elitism, I would like to feel how elite-dominated really is the holding of political election in our country. The basic process itself of filing a certificate of candidacy is already something that non-elitists would find so cumbersome. Comelec officers usually don’t give clear rules on how to file a certificate of candidacy for both local and national positions. Comelec officers usually won’t give out details to the public on how to properly file a certificate of candidacy. It seems that all elective posts are reserved to those who have the fame, money, glory, dynasty and even goons to show to the public. Another thing is that all political parties in the Philippines, whether pro-administration or opposition, are filled with elitist concepts of governance and party membership. How can sectoral representation in our government be possible in the near future if elitism is still the main perspective of being a politician in this country? Even party-list accreditation is a hard thing to decide upon by Comelec officers. I have my own small political group called the League of Political Abrogationists or L.P.A.. Our group wants to join the party-list election under an umbrella name called as Communities’ Alliance for Real Democracy or C.A.R.D.. But, again, party-list accreditation at the Comelec is filled with processes that seem to limit the number of sectoral groups which can join the party-list election. If that’s the rule in every party-list election, then all the party-list representatives at the congress will just come from certain groups that already have stable finances to back up election bids. Note that party-list election seems so limited only to the well-financed and well-known party list groups. Hence, party-list election had also become “traditional politics†itself. Party-list election should have lead the way towards a non-elitist form of democracy in our country. Party-list election should have had democratized both the national and local election-processes. But now it seems that party-list election itself has fallen into the “mud of elitist politics†that has dominated all the national and local elections that had been held in our country since the Philippines became an independent nation in the 1940s.
I’m not sure if my own group called the League of Political Abrogationists will be accredited as a party-list group by the Comelec this election period. But what can I do, such is the reality of elitist politics in the Philippines.
I would now have to withdraw my candidacy for the senate, because after all I’m not really serious about it in the first place. I would be happier sticking it out as a “blogger for socio-political reformsâ€. And, because I’m not sure if my own League of Political Abrogationists will be accredited as a party-list group, I would have to promote to the readers of this message the ideals of political abrogationism and social harmonicalism trough our web page. The readers of this message can know more about my advocacies by just clicking this web page: http://www.geocities.com/esabon/POLITICAL_ABROGATIONERS.html .
I hope that other party-list groups can embrace the ideals of political abrogationism and social harmonicalism. Thanks.