US president Joe Biden and China’s president Xi Jinping have agreed to renew climate talks, ending months of silence due to geopolitical tensions.
The US and China halted discussions around climate change in August after US representative Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in a display of support for its independence. There has also been significant strain between the two countries over trade and security issues in recent months.
Biden and Xi met for more than three hours ahead of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia on Monday. At the conclusion of their meeting, they announced that the two countries would, as Biden said, make an effort to “manage our differences.”
“President Biden underscored that the United States and China must work together to address transnational challenges – such as climate change, global macroeconomic stability including debt relief, health security, and global food security – because that is what the international community expects. The two leaders agreed to empower key senior officials to maintain communication and deepen constructive efforts on these and other issues,” said the White House in a released statement.
Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said, “This unequivocal signal from the two largest economies to work together to address the climate crisis is more than welcome, it’s essential. The world needs every country at the table, striving to deliver solutions that curtail the use of fossil fuels and sharply accelerate investment in clean energy, as well as take steps to reform international financing institutions so they pump more resources into climate action and address crushing debt in developing countries impeding their move to clean economies.
“The window to hold global temperature rise to 1.5 °C degrees – and avoid the worst damage from climate change – is closing fast. We urge the world’s two major economies to act with speed and conviction to meet the challenge of the moment.”
This is seen as a major breakthrough around the issue of climate change. The US and China are the two largest sources of fossil fuel emissions in the world, accounting for over a third of global emissions.
So far, US climate envoy John Kerry and China’s climate envoy Xie Shenhua have not been able to formally negotiate at COP27 in Egypt. A restart between the US and China comes at a pivotal time when nearly 200 countries are working at COP27 to fight climate change, and specifically, discussing whether industrialised countries should compensate developing countries for climate-catastrophe damage.
