BEIJING – A tough road ahead remains for climate cooperation between the United States and China, despite the foundation laid by their retiring climate envoys in the past three years against the prevailing backdrop of bilateral tensions.

Substantive issues, from coal and renewable energy use to methane emissions reduction, have yet to be resolved between the world’s two largest carbon emitters, whose cooperation remains vital for global climate action.

This is even as observers say Mr John Kerry and Mr Xie Zhenhua, with their strong track records and rapport, have performed admirably in keeping climate cooperation on track during their three-year tenure as inaugural envoys. 

On Jan 12, former Chinese vice-foreign minister Liu Zhenmin, 68, was announced as the successor to Mr Xie, 74, who stepped down due to health reasons. Mr Liu is a seasoned diplomat who has served various roles in representing China at the United Nations.

Greenpeace East Asia’s Beijing-based chief China representative Yuan Ying said Mr Liu “has the experience and political profile to enact decisive progress along the path forged by Mr Xie”. She noted that Mr Liu was a key driver in landing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a legally binding global climate agreement that remains remarkable today.

No replacement has yet been named for Mr Kerry, 80, who will step down in a few months to work on President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, but he has two deputies who could fill the role in the short term. Some do not expect an appointment soon, given the short runway before the US presidential election in November 2024.

Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said both the retiring climate envoys “made a real difference for the course of climate change over the past decade”.

Dr Balakrishnan had worked with both men on the 2015 Paris Agreement – the first binding pact under which all nations committed to taking actions to curb global warming. Through his involvement in the negotiations, he “saw upfront and close how essential it is for China and America to get onto the same page”.

Expressing gratitude to both envoys, Dr Balakrishnan said: “The Paris Agreement would not have happened without enormous preparation and negotiations and meetings – bilateral, multilateral – involving the US and China.”

The foreign minister told The Straits Times on Jan 22 that he got to know Mr Xie very well over the course of the negotiations and considered him a friend.

He also recalled how Mr Kerry, who was then US Secretary of State, had sat through meetings that ran through the night, in a testament to his longstanding passion for climate change.

Dr Balakrishnan expressed hope that the trust and processes established so far will put future climate change negotiations “in a good place”, even with both envoys’ departure.

Mr Kerry and Mr Xie’s efforts culminated in the Sunnylands deal in November 2023 after the two met in California. This included an agreement to step up cooperation on methane reduction and support global efforts to triple renewable energy by 2030.

But China’s long-awaited national plan on methane reduction, released a week before the statement, did not specify a target for the total amount of methane emissions to be avoided, nor any timelines – falling short of what some observers were hoping for.

The declaration signified progress – albeit limited – from the low point when climate talks were suspended in August 2022, after then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in a move that angered Beijing.

Mr Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the New York-headquartered Asia Society Policy Institute think-tank, said most, if not all, of the substantive issues remain unresolved.

For instance, questions remain over whether the 2022 US Inflation Reduction Act – President Biden’s signature climate law that incentivises clean energy – can cut US emissions by about 40 per cent by 2030 as expected.

China’s use of coal, which it still relies on despite building record capacity of renewable power in the past decade, has been another sticking point in US-China climate discussions.

Another issue is climate financing, or funding from wealthy countries for the developing world to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. Both the US and China have not met their pledges, although they have acknowledged in previous discussions that this is a potential area for cooperation.

Mr Li believes their successors will be judged by the extent to which they can transcend the politics between the US and China, given the urgency of the climate crisis. “That’s the unfinished business.”

“Kerry and Xie should also be judged by that. At best, they have only succeeded or achieved a very fragile resilience,” he said.

Ms Melissa Low, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions, said US-China declarations before or during COP meetings – the annual international conferences on the climate crisis – have been critical in unlocking global progress. In her view, Mr Kerry and Mr Xie’s biggest contributions to date were helping to broker the first global agreement to move away from fossil fuels under the Global Stocktake at Dubai COP28. The Global Stocktake is a process that allows countries to review how to address their shortcomings to raise global climate ambition.

Dr Bill Hare, founder and chief executive of international climate science and policy institute Climate Analytics, said the value of the longstanding rapport between Mr Kerry and Mr Xie cannot be undersold. There is “no doubt” that their mutual respect and informal discussions have been essential for much of the progress since 2021, he added.

On whether their retirement will be a setback for cooperation, he said it was hard to speculate when Mr Kerry’s successor has not been announced.

“I think they both stepped up or stayed in these roles because they recognised that their experience could play a decisive role at a decisive time. You would hope that their decision to move on comes from a confidence that there are others coming up behind them who can steward this relationship.”

• Additional reporting Joyce Z K Lim