Almost 200 countries agreed in Paris in December on a binding global compact to slash greenhouse gas emissions and keep global temperature increases to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius.
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Barack Obama has now arrived in China on what is expected to be his last trip to Asia as the U.S. president.
Obama spoke Saturday after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Chinese coastal city of Hangzhou.
“As 2016 heads into the record books as likely the hottest year ever recorded in history, it is a reminder that we have precious little time left to act to keep global temperature rise well below 2 C”, Pascal Canfin of environmental group WWF said ahead of a two-day G20 summit opening in Hangzhou, eastern China, on Sunday.
“We need to take an innovative approach to climate change”, he said in Hangzhou, where he is to host the G20 summit of the world s leading developed and emerging economies.
The matter is expected to be on the agenda for Obama’s meeting with Xi, along with ongoing efforts to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, another greenhouse gas.
Last week, White House Senior Director for Asian Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink said Xi and Obama were expected to discuss the “positive” aspects of their bilateral ties, according to White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.
China signed the Paris Agreement at UN Headquarters in NY on April 22.
With the USA and China formally entering into the pact, it now has the support of 25 nations representing just over 39 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Resources Institute.
At a joint ceremony, Xi said it “speaks to the shared ambition and resolve of China and the United States in addressing global issues”. The announcement means the accord could take force by the end of the year, a faster than anticipated timeline. “Our hope is that by taking this concrete action tomorrow we will likewise continue to accelerate this process”.
With this pact, both countries have made the very public decision to ratify the Paris Agreement, which 200 countries agreed to (but didn’t ratify) last December in Paris.
The country is the world’s largest emitter of harmful Carbon dioxide emissions, which cause climate change.
China and Chad have seen an all-round increase of ties in recent years.
With the summit wedged in between the Brexit vote and the US presidential election, G20 leaders will be keen to mount a defence of free trade and globalisation.
There, the president spoke about the urgency of addressing climate change, saying large emitters, namely the US and China, “have a special responsibility to act to make sure that countries willing to do their part move past the dirty phase of development to move into a clean energy strategy”. China and the USA sought to spur other countries to join that pact through their example, Deese said. The Montreal Protocol, for example, agreed in 1987 and ratified by all United Nations countries, has been successful in phasing out use of the chemicals which cause the ozone layer to be depleted.
Without China or the USA on board, the agreement would essentially be meaningless.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping condemned the July 15 defeated coup in Turkey in a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday, according to Turkish presidential sources.
