Ministers from the United States, China, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia will be joined at the two-day meeting by representatives from some of the world's biggest mining and energy companies including Exxon Mobil, Rio Tinto and Peabody Energy of the US.

Most countries have ratified the United Nations 1997 Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases but two of the leading countries in this week's talks, the United States and Australia, have not.

The US accounts for 25 percent of carbon emissions while Australians produce more carbon dioxide per person than any other country, but they say the Kyoto pact is unfair because it does not commit developing nations to reducing emissions.

The first Asia Pacific Clean Development and Climate meeting aims instead to develop new technologies to reduce the effect of emissions on climate, such as burying the gases underground.

Critics say the six-nation initiative, which will be non-binding, is a smokescreen to enable some of the world's major producers and consumers of fossil fuels to avoid taking the difficult and costly action needed to reduce emissions.

About 200 environmentalists are expected to protest outside the Four Seasons hotel Wednesday to "expose the meeting as a sham and as an all talk and no action meeting," Nature Conservation Council director Cate Faehrmann said.

"The US and Australia continue to put up meetings such as this to avoid taking any real action on climate change," she told AFP.

"We think that this is simply a meeting between governments -- the US and Australia -- who are not really wanting to go down the renewable energy track because they are so in bed with the fossil fuel industry."

Faehrmann said Australians were becoming more aware of the problem of global warming, particularly after the country experienced its hottest year on record in 2005 and wildfires swept through homes and farmland after searing temperatures earlier this month.

Scientists have linked rising temperatures to the emission of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which trap heat in the atmosphere like a warming blanket.

Australian Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, who will chair a business dialogue to open the meeting with US Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman, said the talks signalled "the beginning of a new era in emission technology development."

"It's pleasing that business has dealt itself into this dialogue in such a major way, without the threat of carbon taxes or other penalties," he said in a statement.

"This is about identifying commercial technologies of our future."

Professor Warwick McKibbin of the Australian National University said what the conference would achieve was still unknown.

"It's bringing them (officials) to the table to take on commitments of some sort. But from there on we just don't know what they are going to do," he said.

McKibbin said that rather than developing new technologies, governments should concentrate on putting a price on carbon emissions and then "let the market respond to it."

"The long term issue is the world really does have to move away from carbon-emitting actions. And the short term is we don't want to pay too much to do it," he told AFP.

Last year was one of the hottest on record globally. A preliminary estimate from the World Meteorological Organization showed the global average temperature for 2005 was about 0.48 degrees Celsius above normal, placing it in the top four warmest years since records began in 1861.

Experts warn of more violent weather including increased droughts, floods, fires and storms in coming decades.

"In the next couple of decades we can expect to see more heatwaves and fewer cold snaps," said Dean Collins, senior meteorologist at the National Climate Centre in Melbourne.

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