China on Saturday ratified the Paris agreement on climate change, state media reported, a key move by the world’s biggest polluter that brings the deal a major step closer to coming into force.
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The White House announced President Barack Obama would speak about climate change shortly after landing Saturday.
Together, the US and China produce 38 percent of the world’s man-made carbon dioxide emissions. 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. And the countries that join must account for at least 55 percent of the world’s emissions.
The much-anticipated Paris Agreement on climate change is the third document to attempt to address climate change, following the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
To build momentum for a deal, they set a 2030 deadline for emissions to stop rising and announced their “shared conviction that climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humanity”.
China along with 195 other countries signed the Paris Agreement at UN Headquarters in NY on April 22, Earth Day, sending a strong messaging to the worldwide community as it joins forces against global warming. The nations that have joined must also produce at least 55 percent of global emissions.
China ratified the Paris climate change accord on Saturday, with the United States expected to do so later in a joint stand against global warming by the world’s two biggest polluters.
China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, voted to adopt “the proposal to review and ratify the Paris Agreement”, the official Xinhua news agency said.
At a ceremony on the sidelines of a global economic summit, Obama and Xi, representing the world’s two biggest carbon emitters, delivered a series of documents to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The agreement’s long-term goal is to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), compared with pre-industrial times. Temperatures have already risen by nearly 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) since the industrial revolution.
The leaders have committed to setting out concrete plans for how they will deliver the greenhouse gas cuts in their cities needed to help meet the goals of the Paris Agreement to avoid unsafe climate change.
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The US and China have also been discussing a global agreement on aviation emissions, though there’s disagreement about what obligations developing countries should face in the first years.
