Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is expected to use her speech to a special world leaders summit on climate change to commit Australia to setting new post-2020 emissions reduction targets in time for a United Nations deadline early next year.
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Ms Bishop has ruled out outlining stronger targets at the conference of 125 world leaders in New York, but will reconfirm Australia's commitment to cut emissions by 5per cent on 2000 levels by 2020.
Ms Bishop, who is representing Australia at the summit, will also express Australia's commitment to a new global climate agreement due to be signed in Paris next year in her speech to be delivered on Wednesday morning (AEST).
Pressure is growing on the Abbott government to outline how it will determine what Australia's targets to cut emissions will be after 2020.
Countries, including the United States are already signalling their intentions for deep emission cuts over the next three decades.
Australia has been slower to move and there has been little detail from the government about a review it has promised to conduct of Australia's targets next year.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt told Fairfax Media on Tuesday the government would make sure the review was "a very open process and it's done in time to meet our international commitments".
The United Nations wants countries to announce ambitious cuts up to the year 2050 by the end of March next year.
Australia has been viewed as a marginal voice heading into the New York summit.
While China is expected to use the summit to give more detail of its plans for a national carbon pricing scheme, the Abbott government is using the talks to drum up support for an Asia-Pacific rainforest summit in November.
The Climate Council's Tim Flannery said although rainforest protection was valuable, it was marginal and the focus had to be on fossil fuels and decarbonising the economy.
"This is almost our last chance to forge a global deal that will settle our future and keep temperatures below 2 degrees warming," he said.
"We know that we need to leave 80per cent of fossil fuel resources in the ground if we're going to have a steady climate."
He said that Australia's 5per cent reduction target on 2000 levels by 2020, which Ms Bishop says is a 22per cent reduction on business-as-usual scenarios, was "not enough".
After thousands marched in climate rallies around the world at the weekend, Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said the time was fast approaching when countries would be judged on whether they were "fair dinkum or not".
He said expectations of Australia at this summit were low, but that the government was not expected to be "obstructionist".
"Australia is not making major moves," he said. "No one is expecting much from Australia."
