This trend was shown most recently at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, in July 2006: the agenda for the eight most industrialized nations in the world highlighted -- energy security, the critical state of global trade talks, infectious diseases, education, and anti-corruption measures. A FOEI (Friends of the Earth International) spokesperson, for instance, attacked the summit for taking "a 180 degree turnabout" on climate issues :"Despite pledges to take action against climate change, it chose instead to make regressive proposals for major investment in finding new oil and gas reserves, for increased oil refining capacity and for greater reliance on nuclear power".

"Politics is all about agreement, or disagreement, over allocation of resources and priorities. Calgary-based emergy analyst, Peter Tertzakian, of ARC Financial Corporation, in his just-published book, “A Thousand Barrels a Second" argues that "we have entered a multipolar world in which energy is the primary source of global tensions." Renfrew Christie, a leading South African social scientist, looks forward, fearfully, to the 21st century being, for Africa, "a century of oil wars."

So what has the international community been doing? A large part of it set up what has been called “the coal pact.” At the 12th ASEAN Regional Forum in Laos in July 2005, the US, Australia, China, India, Japan, and South Korea announced the creation of a new Asia-Pacific Partnership (APP) on clean development, energy security and climate change. (These six countries are the world's leading greenhouse gas producers, accounting for about 50% of global GHG emissions.)

The vision statement of the APP says “the partnership will collaborate to promote and create an enabling environment for the development, diffusion, deployment and transfer of existing and emerging cost-effective, cleaner technologies and practices, through concrete and substantial cooperation so as to achieve practical results.” But China is in the partnership because it wants technological fixes, such as greater efficiency, carbon capture and storage etc., to allow it to continue coal burning. As Antoaneta Bezlov, comments in AsianTimesOnline: ".... despite throwing its weight behind the Kyoto treaty, Beijing sees few short-term solutions to satisfying growing energy demand beyond bringing new coal-fired power plants on line. China is planning 562 new coal-fired power stations - nearly half the world's total of plants expected to come online in the years up to 2012, when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol ends. Such is the scope of the power plant expansion that China's increases in GHG emissions in coming years may well dwarf the 5% cuts in emissions required under Kyoto during the 2008-12 period.

For a start, emissions of carbon dioxide from China are increasing faster than from any other country in the world. In 1990, China accounted for some 10.5% of world carbon-dioxide emissions. That figure rose to 12.7% in 2001 and is now second only to the US, whose 25% share China is likely to match within a few decades. "

According to Liz Bossley, CEO of the Consilience Energy Advisory Group Ltd (CEAG), a Director of the London Climate Change Services (LCCS) group and (principal author of Climate Change and Emissions Trading: What Every Business Needs to Know: "Despite the rhetoric, the APP could become a simpler alternative to Kyoto CDMs and JIs. The approval process for CDM and JI projects has proven so far to be lengthy and bureaucratic, partly because of under-funding of the relevant UN executive board. The APP might be characterized by some as the US and Australia gaining the upside of clean technology transfer, and the international commerce that accompanies it, without the bureaucracy of CDMs and JIs and without having to commit to specific greenhouse gas reductions.

Is the APP opposition to, or is it complementary to Kyoto? As yet it’s difficult to be exactly sure, but experienced analysts such as Steina Andresen of Norway’s CICERO (Center for International Climate and Environmental Research think-tank returns to the energy security, or economic growth argument: no country, he thinks, "in practice is willing to forsake economic growth to reduce the climate problem. We should probably maintain an open and pragmatic stance toward this initiative—the APP-- because no matter what, we cannot ignore the United States, or the biggest developing countries, should they choose to follow paths other than the traditional climate regime. An intriguing possibility is the combination of the strong emphasis on technology in the Asia-Pacific Partnership and emissions trading in the Kyoto Protocol…. the partnership is definitively not a viable alternative to the established process. It may well become a supplement in the long run, and there are undoubtedly also elements of window dressing. Regardless, it is probably not within either of these fora –the APP and the Kyoto Protocol-- --that the fate of the climate will be decided. There is simply no avoiding the fact that the climate problem is, for most key actors, a “little brother” compared to heavy issues connected to energy, security, economic growth and trade.

Nonetheless, in the interim, what can developing countries look for on the CDM front? CICERO has some optimism: it pointed out in June of this year that CDMs have the potential to reduce carbon leakage by around three fifths. But back to competition from China- which is rapidly emerging as the world's major player on the CDM market: in May this year, as many as 46 Chinese projects had received CDM approval - they represent more than 30 percent of the expected certified emission reductions (CERs) from CDM initiatives this year.

"Statistics from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change show that China is emerging as a major player by volume, overtaking India and Brazil as the largest supplier of CERs to the market." The country’s current portfolio of projects covers a wide range of areas, including renewable energy, energy efficiency, waste handling and disposal, methane recovery and utilization, and reduction of trifluoromethane (HFC-23) emissions. Construction of wind power infrastructure alone accounts for 45 percent of all projects. However, that is the percentage of the projects. When one looks at the percentages of the CERs generated, it is clear that windpower will only generate a small proportion. 90% of the CERs earned by China from projects currently in the pipeline will come from just 4 HFC projects.

Another reason for not getting too enthusiastic about the CDM and China, Worldwatch observes, is that China, which is now functioning as the workshop of the world and home for the world's heavy industry, derives 65% of its energy from burning coal. In consequence, as it plans to quadruple its national income between 2002 and 2020, it also intends to double its energy consumption to achieve this. It is true that the Chinese have a renewable energy promotion plan which envisages an increase in the share of renewables from 7% to 15% up to 2020, however, most of the increase in the energy supply will come from burning more coal. "Climate change is not a top priority in China - the CDM is just a useful tool for the Chinese to get extra resources to deal with severe energy supply problems."

The respected British environmental centre, the Tyndall Institute, moreover, expresses its concern about some of CDM’s likely effects in Latin America: "Whilst investment in carbon sequestration and market-based approaches are attractive for developed country investors and developing country governments, the outcomes are far less certain and the prospects less attractive for local people. Marginalised voices - women, the landless, and poorly educated are seldom given prominence in the projects, and any venture which involves risk, uncertainty and future, rather than present, benefits is likely to further disadvantage them. This has important implications for local equity and sustainable development."

*Dr. Alexander Craig is a writer based in Quebec. Formerly Buenos Aires correspondent for the Guardian and other British papers, he then wrote his Ph.D., at Manchester, on the politics of development.