Australia appears to be on the right track on its carbon pricing program as a UN report that came out Thursday called on countries in the Asia-Pacific region to ramp up their efforts in reducing carbon emission while attaining economic prosperity.

In its 2012 Asia-Pacific Human Development Report, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) delivered a sharp rebuke on developing nations in the region, specifically on China and India, in which they can no longer delay efforts that would prevent natural disasters that scientists have attributed to climate change.

"Asia-Pacific does not have the option to 'grow now and clean up later' in view of the already accumulated huge amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," UNDP regional director Ajay Chhibber said in the report, which was issued in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Countries in the region need to strike a balance on giving emphasis to their economic goals without overlooking measures that protect the environment, the UNDP report said.

"The goal is clear; reduce poverty, increase prosperity but leave a smaller carbon footprint," Mr Chhibber was reported by The Australian as saying in the report.

The UNDP report also called into attention the plight of an estimated 700 million people still trapped in abject poverty in the region, which would emerge as the most vulnerable sector in the event Asian nations opted to set aside the importance of calibrating their economies with realistic carbon reduction schemes.

"The world's common future will be hugely affected by choices that are made in Asia and the Pacific on a low carbon growth path," the report said.

The UN has identified Asia as the major concentration of carbon emissions that the world has been producing, with about 85 per cent of coal, oil and natural gas sold from around the world being burned in the region each year.

To reverse the perceived acceleration of global climate deterioration, the UNDP report stressed that solid steps must be taken by Asia-Pacific governments to alter the region's traditional process of producing foods and creating energy.

The region needs to realise that the issue of climate change was not confined in the realm of the developed nations as Mr Chhibber acknowledged that "until five years ago, many Asian countries were of the view that climate change was a problem for the developed world."

In accepting the realities that come with the present environmental concerns, these nations, Mr Chhibber told The Sydney Morning Herald, will be further empowered to plot economic blueprints that were in synch with efforts to cut down carbon emission.

"We have to give people choices which allow them to live healthy, long lives without necessarily aping the consumption patterns of the western world," the UN official said in conceding that economic growth is important as well, especially in ensuring that millions of people in the region will have access to decent lives in the years ahead.

He warned, however, that "Asian growth is reducing global inequality," which all the more drive home the point that Asian governments must give equal importance to their economic and environmental well-being.

Australia has spearheaded carbon pricing in the region with scheduled fixed-price carbon tax that takes effect July 2012, which analysts said came with a big price for Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

The new tax program has been blamed as one of the main reasons that Ms Gillard was lagging behind the opposition Liberal Party in series of national surveys conducted in the past few months, presenting for her the spectre of a likely defeat in 2013.