Environmental groups and experts tracking global climate policy said they expected the two leaders would jointly enter the sweeping emissions-cutting deal reached past year in Paris.
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In a ceremony in Hangzhou, China, Mr. Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping deposited each country’s official “instrument of acceptance” with U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon to join the agreement. The papers certified the USA and China have taken the necessary steps to join the Paris accord that set nation-by-nation targets for cutting carbon emissions.
The proposal said that ratifying the agreement was conducive to China’s development interests, and it will also help the country play a bigger role in global climate governance. He said the Paris Agreement may be remembered as “the moment we finally made a decision to save our planet”.
“India will engage constructively on all the issues before us and work towards finding solutions and taking forward the agenda for a robust, inclusive and sustainable global economic order that uplifts the socio-economic conditions of people across the world, especially those who need it most in developing countries”, Prime Minister Modi has said in his tweet on the G20 summit.
If the agreement is eventually adopted, he said, “we’ll have a truly global climate agreement that will bind the two biggest emitters in the world”.
Xi met Obama in the eastern city of Hangzhou on the eve of the G20 summit, Xinhua news agency reported. It will only come into force legally after it is ratified by at least 55 countries, which between them produce 55% of global carbon emissions.
China has ratified the landmark Paris agreement on climate change just hours before the start of the G20 summit, where representatives of the world’s leading economies will gather.
The two leaders presided over a meeting that saw delegations from both countries sign three agreements covering nuclear security, energy and agricultural health certification.
Obama spoke Saturday after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Chinese coastal city of Hangzhou.
” China and the U.S. together account for about 38 percent of global emissions”.
“But this is an important step forward that reinforces the US and China’s continued leadership in building a robust, durable worldwide climate framework”.
This would be followed by a meeting of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) leaders ahead of the G20 summit, which would begin later in the day.
“You know China calls itself a developing country, but we know that the Chinese have the second largest economy in the world and the rate at which they are growing, they will soon become the most important country in terms of the size of their economy”, Osei, who is also a former Ghana Ambassador to the United States. But before today’s announcement, only 23 signatories, responsible for about one percent of global emissions, had ratified it.
“This moment should be seen as a starting point, not the finale, of global action on climate”, said Greenpeace policy adviser Li Shuo. The emerging partnership between the two biggest carbon emitters is a bright spot of Obama’s uneven eight-year project to reshape US relations in Asia.
WWF-China CEO LO Sze Ping said the move by China sends an encouraging signal to the world.
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Yes, though not for as wide-ranging an issue as climate change.
