SYDNEY, Sept 8: Pacific Rim leaders agreed on Saturday to curb global warming by improving energy use and expanding forests, laying out a plan they hope will influence future climate change talks but which critics dismissed as too timid.US President George W. Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin, China’s Hu Jintao and leaders of other Asia-Pacific economies adopted the programme at an annual summit after officials struck a deal between richer and developing nations over targets.

The programme’s centrepieces are two modest goals — one on energy efficiency, the other on forests. Unlike the contentious, UN-backed Kyoto Protocol, it does not set targets on the greenhouse gas emissions which cause global warming, and its goals are voluntary.

Yet in bringing together the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit’s disparate group of countries on a contentious issue, the programme may carry weight in upcoming talks in Washington, New York and Indonesia for new post-Kyoto blueprint.

“Apec leaders have charted a new international consensus for the region and the world,” summit host Australian Prime Minister John Howard said, standing outside the graceful, shell-shaped Sydney Opera House where the leaders met.

A massive demonstration that activist groups called for -- and that authorities warned could be violent -- mostly fizzled in the presence of a show of force by police and threats of arrest.

About 3,000 demonstrators held a festive, mostly peaceful rally, protesting against Mr Bush, the Iraq war and Apec’s pro-business policies. Police arrested 17 protesters while two officers were injured. But protesters stayed on the approved route and away from a three-metre metal fence police erected across downtown Sydney to cordon off summit sites.

Aside from their group meeting, Apec leaders also took advantage of the gathering to confer with each other. Bush held a first-ever three-way meeting with Australia’s Howard and Japan’s Shinzo Abe to discuss India, China and other security issues.

It was on climate change where Apec leaders hoped to break new ground. The grouping accounts for more than half the world’s economy and contains most of its biggest polluters.

“If you have Apec, especially the largest emitters -- the US, China, Russia, Japan -- sign up to an agreement like that, it would be hard to ignore at the global level,” said Malcolm Cook of Sydney-based think-tank Lowy Institute.

But other climate change experts and environmental activists were dismissive, saying the goals were non-binding and so modest in scope as to render the programme ineffective.

“In practical terms, that will mean almost nothing,” Frank Jotzo, an Australian National University expert in climate change economics, said of the plan. “It is very unambitious.”

Under the platform, Apec members will reduce ‘energy intensity’ -- the amount of energy needed to produce a dollar of gross domestic product -- 25 per cent by 2030. They pledged to increase forest cover in the region by at least 20 million hectares by 2020.

While an Apec statement said the added trees were enough to absorb about 11 per cent of the greenhouse gases the world emitted in 2004, critics said the increase did not make up for ever-rising emissions levels.

The ‘energy intensity’ goal was particularly weak, Jotzo said, as it sets a rate that most economies are naturally meeting as they get richer and shift out of power-intensive manufacturing.

“If the Apec statement is the platform for future action on climate change, then the world is in trouble,” said Greenpeace energy campaigner Catherine Fitzpatrick.

But in getting the United States, China and other countries to agree, Apec set some precedents. Unlike Kyoto, which largely exempted developing countries from targets, China has signed on to Apec’s goals.

In approving the Apec pact, the United States and Australia have agreed with China and other developing countries that richer countries should bear more of the costs in solving global warming.

“That can potentially break this impasse between developed and developing countries,” Jotzo said.—AP