New York: Australia has restated its commitment to reduce its carbon emissions by 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020, at a meeting of the top 17 economies in New York hosted by United States Secretary of State John Kerry.
"This is an ambitious target," Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop told the inaugural meeting of the Major Economies Forum Foreign Ministers. "Australia will be reducing emissions by 22 per cent against business-as-usual levels. It has bipartisan support in Australia."
Noting that Australia was responsible for 1.5 per cent of global emissions, she said all countries, "especially the major emitters", must take action.
Though the target had been criticised as low, Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum, who attended the meeting as an observer, said he was pleased at the commitment as he feared Australia might step back from it, given the government's stance on climate change.
He said he took the opportunity again to invite Ms Bishop to visit the island nation to see the impact of climate change.
As world leaders gathered for the United Nations General Assembly, Mr Kerry sought to make climate change central to the week of meetings.
"Today, we can see climate refugees," he told the meeting. "We see people fighting over water in some places. There are huge challenges to food security and challenges to the ecosystem, our fisheries and otherwise. The acidification of the ocean is a challenge for all of us.
"While we are confronting [Islamic State], and we are confronting terrorism and we are confronting Ebola, this also has an immediacy that people have come to understand," he said. "There is a long list of important issues before all of us, but the grave threat that climate change poses warrants a prominent position on that list."
On Tuesday, leaders will meet at a climate summit to create a framework for climate meetings in Paris next year.
As the foreign ministers gathered, crowds from what organisers claimed was the largest climate protest in history were dissipating on Manhattan streets.
An estimated 300,000 marched from Central Park to pressure leaders to act on climate change. They were joined by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former US vice president Al Gore, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal, as well as celebrities including actors Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo DiCaprio.
New York mayor Bill de Blasio marched with much of the City Hall staff, as did faculties from major universities, church, union, student and indigenous groups. More than 1400 organisations endorsed the march.
The march stopped and started through the city as marshals worked to keep the flow of people moving through the city along the three-kilometre route.
"We said it would take everyone to change everything, and everyone showed up," said Eddie Bautista, executive director of the Environmental Justice Alliance.
