ASIA's biggest carbon emitters face dual challenges this year that risk undermining their fight against climate change – a global recession that's crippling domestic business and elections in a pivotal year. For the moment, however, there is a little to suggest they've lost their pace in the drive to embrace cleaner energy policies, or a souring of goodwill toward achieving a broader climate pact at the end of the year to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Even in Australia, where growing political opposition is threatening the world's most sweeping cap-and-trade system, the government has staked its reputation on getting the scheme through parliament in coming months. Elsewhere in Asia, the drive towards clean energy seems just as strong. For China, the world's top carbon polluter, going green makes good business sense. South Korea thinks the same, while Indian political parties are set to roll out climate change manifestos ahead of elections. Indonesia has backed a UN scheme that could curb deforestation in return for billions of dollars in carbon credits, while India and China have snared the highest number of UN-backed clean-energy projects that also yield carbon credits. As green investment grows, along with signs of accelerating climate change, pressure is rising on nations to seal a broader and tougher post-Kyoto framework in December during UN-led talks in the Danish capital, Copenhagen. “There will be a deal because there is a will for a deal this time around,” one of India's top climate negotiators told Reuters on condition of anonymity. He is still in the process of drafting New Delhi's stance for a year-end UN climate meeting. The election of US President Barack Obama has also helped keep Asia's green policy plans on track after he pledged to rein in the United States' greenhouse gas pollution, fund green investment and backed carbon cap-and-trade. Emerging economies in Asia were more likely to use the financial crisis to help them shift into low-carbon development than developed countries, said Kim Carstensen, director of environmental group WWF's Global Climate Initiative. Asian economies were directing more of their investment cash towards new infrastructure and factories. They also expected at least part of their climate change efforts to be paid for by rich nations. “If and when that happens, there are few reasons to choose the dirtier alternatives,” Carstensen told Reuters from Copenhagen. Steeling Asian resolve What the United States does between now and then is crucial. “If the US, under Obama's leadership, rigorously pursues a post-Kyoto Protocol that requires the US itself to significantly reduce their own emissions, this is likely to steel the resolve of Asian nations to do likewise,” said Australian climate policy and development expert Matthew Clarke. “A weak US position will undermine any current goodwill that may exist in Asia to act in the interest of the world,” added Clarke, of the School of International and Political Studies at Deakin University in Melbourne. Asia has three of the world's top five greenhouse gas emitters – China, India and Japan – plus industrial powers Australia and South Korea as well as Indonesia, where deforestation and forest fires are a major source of planet-warming pollution. India, Indonesia and Japan all face elections, but analysts say any changes of government will unlikely upset existing climate policies. In India and Indonesia, for instance, climate change is not yet a major domestic policy issue. Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso has pledged to release mid-term targets for emissions cuts by June while the opposition Democrats have pledged to ramp up spending on clean energy as a way to boost the economy and wants tough emissions reduction targets for 2020. “The Democrats have been eager on the issue of fighting climate change, so if they win the election, policies are expected to move forward,” said Mikiko Kainuma, chief of the climate policy assessment research section at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan.
