Climate change is a threat, we must all work together but we can’t let it affect economic growth or the ambitions of hundreds of millions of impoverished people to live better lives.

    That was basically the message from some of the world’s top polluters on Wednesday after they signed a regional climate declaration,  less than two weeks before a major U.N.-sponsored meeting on global warming in Bali.

     The pact contained no fixed targets on cutting emissions or limiting their growth by a specific date but did pledge to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the long run. As pacts go, this one is pretty vague.

   “Climate change has to be addressed — but they cannot leave people in absolute poverty,” Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said after the negotiations involving 16 nations in the city state.

    The pact involved the leaders of the East Asia Summit, which comprises 10 South East Asian countries, plus six other nations. These include China, India and Japan, among the world’s top polluters, and Australia, a major coal exporter.

      “Efforts to fight climate change should promote, not block, economic development,” China’s Premier Wen Jiabao told the summit.

      The problem is that many scientist and the United Nations say Asia will be among the regions hardest-hit by climate change.

    More extreme weather, such as intense storms and prolonged droughts, rising seas and melting glaciers are expected to cause widespread damage, affect food and water supplies and create millions of refugees.

    For Asia, and indeed the rest of the world, climate change has truly become the classic chicken-and-egg situation. Do you reform your economies and prepare your populations now or do you go for growth and deal with the problem in earnest when it really becomes a crisis?

   While many Asian nations are working to trim emissions and become more energy efficient, these steps aren’t matching the pace of economic development. China says it needs an extra one million kilometres (600,000 miles) of roads by 2020 and says rich nations should take the lead in cutting emissions during negotiations to be launched in Bali.

    While developed nations should do more to fight climate change, what should fast-growing Asian nations do now before the costs of climate change become too great to ignore?