At the APEC Summit in Singapore on 13 November 2009, leaders of Pacific Rim nations agreed on “a new growth paradigm” rejecting “all forms of protectionism” and a commitment to slash business costs in the region by 25 percent in the next five years. US President Barack Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama were the stars of the summit.

The APEC leaders’ final statement became the source of intense interest when it appeared lacking specific greenhouse emission targets that had been included in an earlier draft.

In fact, trade talks dominated the Summit. Many APEC countries, including Canada, Mexico and China raised concerns about the rising tide of protectionism in the United States. Perhaps the real significance of APEC Summit was the ‘U’ turn on the Climate Change issue and the Singapore summit did douse hopes of a major breakthrough at the Copenhagen climate change talks in December.

The leaders representing half of the world’s economy removed specific greenhouse gas targets for APEC countries in their final statement. Thus the final communiqué was largely silent, on any hard commitment on cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. In a sense, it was a harbinger to the thought that there will be no legally binding deal at Copenhagen.

However, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the host, denied that the targets of 50 percent cuts from 1990 levels by 2050 had been dropped. “We didn’t drop the emissions, we negotiated a draft, we settled on a text,” he said.

The issue was live in part because of the proximity of the faltering Copenhagen climate change summit, and because the opportunities presented by climate change have emerged at the core of the APEC leaders’ strategy to shore up their recovery from the world’s worst financial and economic crisis in decades.

Climate Card

But the climate change did surface seriously at a breakfast meeting that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Mexican President Felipe Calderon co-hosted on the margins of APEC, and attended by US President Barack Obama and China’s Hu Jintao. Denmark’s Prime Minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen also flew into Singapore to attend it.

Speaking after the breakfast, Mr. Rudd summed up the general view of the Copenhagen process. “Leaders were clear in their view that the current officials-led process is running into all sorts of difficulties, and therefore it is time for leaders, politically, to step in”, he said.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said. “There was a fair consensus around the breakfast table that a political agreement, a broader political agreement, is still achievable at Copenhagen and that is what everybody is aiming for.” APEC leaders did promise to “rationalise and phase out over the medium-term fossil fuel subsidies while providing those in need with essential energy services.”

They accepted that the only way forward for Copenhagen was to set a two-stage process, with the aim of getting a legally binding deal between nations further down the track.

Trans-Pacific Partnership

On the issue of trade, Obama fuelled some optimism among Asia-Pacific leaders with his key foreign policy speech in Japan before he arrived in Singapore. Recommitting the US to Asia unlike the Bush administration, Obama pledged Washington to join an important and ambitious free trade initiative, named the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

There was a US-ASEAN Summit at the sidelines where a range of negotiations and discussions on vital issues, ranging from Russia-US nuclear disarmament plans, Iran’s nuclear programme, a prospective cross-straits economic deal between China and Taiwan, Myanmar and regional people smuggling were discussed.

Japan next host

APEC was launched 20 years ago to promote trade and strengthen economic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, which now accounts for more than half the world’s economic activity and 40 percent of its population.

India is among the nations knocking at the door when a moratorium on new entrants expires next year. Japan, the 2010 summit host for the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, is not looking forward to bearing the burden of the membership jostle.

Members

APEC’s members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Chinese Taipei, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.

APEC was founded 20 years ago to promote greater trade and integration around the Pacific Rim. Its scope has since expanded to encompass a wide range of issues, including climate change, energy security and food security for the millions of vulnerable poor in the region.

At least 11 more economies, mostly from Latin America, are lobbying to join, but their applications must win unanimous approval. Colombia lobbied intensively for its eventual accession to APEC at last year’s meeting in Peru, and Costa Rica and Ecuador are among other would-be members.

India, which lies outside the region’s Pacific Rim parameter, pushed hard for membership in the 1990s, seeking support from Australia, Japan and Peru. But it was left disappointed when the group announced a 10-year moratorium on the admission of new members in 1997, a measure that was then extended for another three years.

“India would be interested in an APEC membership. We were kept out in the past mainly due to pressure from a neighbouring country. Now, I see no reason why we should not get in,” said a former foreign secretary of India.