Australia is under fire at the Paris climate talks amid concern it is taking advantage of overly flexible rules to claim greenhouse gas emissions are falling when they are actually on the increase. 
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull drew applause from fellow leaders at Monday's summit opening when he declared that Australia would ratify the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol - the climate treaty applicable to some industrialised countries only.
Australia is relying on its negotiating teams securing a definition of emissions that allows the country to count a reduction in deforestation towards its target.
However, delegates from the Association of Small Island States expressed concern that the definition would allow Australia to increase its industrial emissions by 2020 to about 11 per cent above 2000 levels while still being able to claim it is meeting its target of a 5 per cent cut in that period.
A senior South African delegate said Australia was playing within the rules. Such rules may be tightened during the Paris talks - but only for post-2020 emissions.
A member of a major country negotiating team told Fairfax Media that observers who did not think there was a problem were either unaware of the technical issues involved or making a "strategic assessment that it is not worth making a fuss over".
That is because dispute over the Kyoto Protocol only relates to emissions up to 2020, and the focus in Paris is winning support for a long-term future where nations will become net-zero emitters.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt said Australia would ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
"The Prime Minister made a clear commitment this week to ratification," Mr Hunt said. "We're fully confident that the rules will remain as they are and accommodate all of our objectives."
Former Greens leader Christine Milne, in Paris as a global Greens ambassador, said work by the University of Melbourne had detailed accounting issues that allowed Australia's emissions to rise even as the country met formal commitments to cut them.
Australia has only to reduce emissions by 0.5 per cent each year between 2013 and 2020 to meet its second stage Kyoto commitments.
Estimates suggest that the favourable ruling allowing reduced deforestation to be counted against industrial and other greenhouse gas emissions would amount to between 60 and 120 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
It is roughly equivalent to the amount that the government has signed contracts to pay for through its Direct Action emissions reduction fund - 92 million tonnes, at a cost of about $1.22 billion.
"Once again, Australia's relying on dodgy accounting rules to include land use ... in order to massage the figures and do nothing," Ms Milne said. "Mr Turnbull's taken the gamble that they are going to be able to beat the world into submission."
New figures show that emissions from Australia's energy sector continue to increase. They have risen 3.5 per cent in the 15 months since the Abbott government scrapped the carbon price, according to consultants Pitt & Sherry.