The Darwin Declaration: the declaration you have when you have nothing to declare

"We determined that addressing the challenges of energy security and sustainable development should be based on well-functioning markets that are progressively characterised by free and open trade, secure and transparent frameworks for investment, market-based price signals, market transparency, good governance and effective competition."

- Paragraph 5, The Darwin Declaration on Achieving Energy Security and Sustainable Development through Efficiency, Conservation and Diversity, 29.5.07

There's an important meeting of nations taking place in Darwin this week. It's the ICC World Cricket League Division Three tournament, one of the first stepping stones to the 2011 World Cup. There's a useless junket taking place in Darwin this week. It's the Eighth APEC Energy Ministers Meeting, also known as EMM8.

The Energy Ministers (now there's an oxymoron) of the APEC member nations have come up with a useless document. If the ICC WCL Div.3 wasn't a limited-over competition, the Darwin Declaration could have been an incident in the big clash between Fiji and Italy.

Let's have another excerpt:

"APEC oil import dependency is forecast to rise from 36 percent in 2002 to 52 percent in 2030. Recent high oil prices have been driven by supply-demand fundamentals, geopolitical risks and concerns about supply interruption and speculative trading. In response we encourage APEC economies to adopt a broad range of measures designed to enhance security of supply and promote fuel efficient transport and the uptake of viable alternative fuels." (paragraph 12)

And there you have the only forward-looking target in the entire document. To quote paragraph 23:

"To assist interested economies in developing policies that support energy security and environmental objectives:
• we direct the EWG to develop a voluntary Energy Peer Review Mechanism, with an initial focus on progress toward attaining energy efficiency goals."

Interested economies. Voluntary mechanism. Initial focus on progress toward attaining.

Piss weak.

Declarations are illegal at the WCL. They should have been outlawed at EMM8 as well.

This report from the ABC. I'll look for more reaction tomorrow.