The Big Question: Will APEC's climate-change deal amount to anything more than hot air?

Why are we asking this now?

The 21 members of APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) are holding their annual summit in Sydney this week. With the world's top three greenhouse gas polluters (China, the US and Russia) present, climate change is high on the agenda. The subject has been discussed at bilateral talks between the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, and President George Bush, and at a meeting yesterday between Mr Bush and the Chinese President, Hu Jintao. On Sunday, when the forum wraps up, leaders will issue a "Sydney Declaration" on combating climate change.

Isn't APEC supposed to focus on trade?

Yes, and there have been plenty of ministerial-level discussions about tariffs, trade barriers and unfair subsidies. But other regional topics, including security and military cooperation, always come up at APEC gatherings, while trickier issues – allegations that the Chinese military has hacked into the Pentagon's computer network, for instance – hover in the background. Mr Howard wants APEC 2007 to be remembered as the summit that agreed a new global strategy for tackling climate change.

But isn't Howard a climate-change sceptic?

He was, for more than a decade. Australia is one of only two industrialised nations – the other being the US – that has declined to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Mr Howard pooh-poohed last year's landmark report on global warming by the British economist Sir Nicholas Stern and he refused to meet Al Gore when the latter visited Australia to promote his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

But with his country now in the grip of the worst drought on record, Mr Howard has belatedly woken up to the reality of climate change on his doorstep. There is also an election pending, and the Prime Minister, who is languishing in the polls, has realised that many Australians care deeply about this issue. The APEC summit, as well as raising Mr Howard's international profile, is an opportunity for him to convince voters that he really cares, too, and wants to act.

How can a Kyoto refusenik provide leadership?

Mr Howard considers Kyoto a flawed and outdated tool for addressing climate change, since it does not require India and China, two of the world's biggest polluters, to cut emissions. He has called the treaty "top-down, prescriptive, legalistic and Eurocentric", and said it "simply won't fly in a rising Asia-Pacific region".

Instead, Mr Howard wants a new global framework that embraces China, India and the US, to take effect when the first phase of Kyoto expires in 2012. Australia was the driving force behind the establishment of a regional group, the Asia-Pacifc Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which focuses on the development and transfer of clean energy technology, but sets no caps on carbon emissions. Australians remain the biggest per capita energy consumers on the planet.

Are other APEC members willing to play ball?

The main obstacle is China, which is opposed to a declaration committing its signatories to setting energy efficiency targets. President Hu yesterday reiterated his view that the United Nations is the best forum to tackle climate change, and that wealthy nations should bear a greater share of the responsibility for cutting global emissions.

China's perspective is shared by other developing APEC member nations, including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, which place a priority on domestic economic growth. The Malaysian Trade Minister, Rafidah Aziz, said yesterday that APEC "is not the place to discuss the whys and wherefores of climate change', while the Philippines President, Gloria Arroyo, declared that APEC should not be usurping the UN's key role. As for Mr Bush, he has sung the praises of nuclear power, and also of Mr Howard, praising him for his "leadership on climate change".

So what is the Sydney Declaration going to say?

With the split between rich and developing nations as entrenched as ever, the wording of the final statement is still being hammered out by officials. But Australia, which has most to gain from a declaration of substance, only wants member countries to agree to commit themselves to "aspirational" targets. Those targets would be aimed at improving energy efficiency, increasing forest cover in the region and accelerating the exchange of clean energy technologies.

The declaration is not expected to include any long-term goals for reducing carbon emissions, nor will it be in any way binding. That falls far short of Mr Howard's goal, pre-APEC, of setting out a new vision for a post-Kyoto framework. It also makes his prediction that the summit would be "one of the most important international gatherings of leaders to discuss climate since the 1992 Rio Conference" sound decidedly hollow.

What does Sydney think of the Declaration?

Sydneysiders are unimpressed with all things APEC, since their laid-back harbourside city has been transformed into a fortress, thanks to a 9ft high fence that effectively cuts the city centre in two. Businesses located inside the three mile-long barrier – dubbed the Great Wall of Sydney, or the Rabble-Proof Fence – are suffering losses; tourist landmarks including the Opera House have been temporarily off-limits, helicopters whir constantly overhead, and the traffic is a nightmare.

Where does this leave prospects post-APEC?

On 24 September the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, will host a conference of a hundred heads of government in New York. Three days later, a gathering in Washington, organised by Mr Bush, will bring together the leaders of the world's 15 biggest economies, along with UN and European Union representatives. Both will feed into a meeting in December on the Indonesian island of Bali of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – the key UN negotiating body, which agreed the Kyoto Protocol in 1998.

All of these talkfests have the same aim: to thrash out a framework to replace Kyoto. But the same north-south split witnessed in Sydney will have to be overcome. As one Philippines delegate at APEC said yesterday: "We sleep on the same bed, but we have different dreams."

So are those hoping for decisive action going to be disappointed?

Yes...

* 'Aspirational' targets don't mean anything. Only unequivocal commitment counts

* In spite of all the rhetoric, the gulf between the developed and developing world remains

* APEC countries remain more concerned about economic growth than about climate change

No...

* Australia needs to associate itself with real progress on climate change, if only for domestic political reasons

* China, which recently overtook the US as the world's biggest polluter, is at least willing to talk

* Even an agreement on energy efficiency targets is a step in the right direction