US envoy John Kerry says 'more work' needed to rebuild China-US climate relations
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US climate envoy John Kerry said that his talks with Chinese officials this week have been constructive but complicated.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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BEIJING – US climate envoy John Kerry said more work was needed this year to reach agreements with China on major climate issues, after three days of talks in Beijing to rebuild trust between the world’s two biggest carbon polluters.
The two sides agreed climate change was urgent and that they should stick to the global commitment “to keep 1.5 alive,” Mr Kerry said, referring to pledges to keep global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 deg C above pre-industrial temperatures. That would mark a shift in China’s tone, after Chinese officials in previous months appeared to question the latest United Nations scientific report on global warming.
The US-China climate talks had been suspended nearly a year ago after a visit by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan
“We - our team and the United States administration - came to Beijing in order to unstick what has been stuck since almost last August,” Mr Kerry told reporters, late on Wednesday.
While China said its climate policies would not be dictated by others, it planned further negotiations with the US ahead of the next UN climate summit, COP28, starting Nov 29 in Dubai, Mr Kerry said.
“Further engagements should help unlock more ambition in reducing coal consumption, cutting methane emissions and beating a path towards a stronger outcome at COP28,” said Mr Li Shuo, senior climate adviser with the environmental group Greenpeace in Beijing.
Mr Li described this week’s talks as “a complex rescue operation for the US-China climate dialogue”.
Mr Kerry lauded the meetings for realigning the countries on climate, telling reporters that the US was pushing for a new framework agreement that would have China “embrace something they haven’t embraced before.” Mr Kerry did not elaborate.
Earlier in the talks, Mr Kerry told Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng that climate change was a “universal threat” that should be handled separately from broader diplomatic issues between China and the United States. He said holding global warming to near 1.5 deg C would require significant Chinese efforts to reduce carbon dioxide, methane and other non-carbon-based greenhouse gas emissions, the US State Department said.
Acknowledging the diplomatic difficulties between the two sides in recent years, Mr Kerry said climate should be treated as a “free-standing” challenge that requires the collective efforts of the world’s largest economies to resolve.
“We have the ability to... make a difference with respect to climate,” he said, at a meeting at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, China’s sprawling parliament building.
“We are only following the best science,” he told reporters. “There is no politics or ideology in what we are doing.”
‘Positive signal’
Amid the negotiations that often stretched overtime at the iconic, 70s-era Hotel Beijing overlooking the Forbidden City, heat waves scorched parts of Europe, Asia and the United States
Mr Kerry spent time with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi and Premier Li Qiang as well as veteran climate envoy Xie Zhenhua
“If we can come together over these next months leading up to COP28, which will be the most important since Paris, we will have an opportunity to be able to make a profound difference on this issue,” he told V-P Han.
Mr Han said the two countries had maintained close communication and dialogue
Mr Kerry told reporters earlier that his talks with Chinese officials this week have been constructive but complicated, with the two sides still dealing with political “externalities”, including Taiwan. Nevertheless, he described the mood as “very, very positive.”
“We’re just reconnecting,” he said. “We’re trying to re-establish the process we have worked on for years.” REUTERS
