By Omotayo Edubi
China and the United States have agreed to intensify efforts to combat climate change with “concrete actions,” in a joint statement announced Wednesday in climate talks in Glasgow.
The two biggest carbon polluting countries said their deal calls for “enhanced climate action in the 2020s” using the 2015 Paris climate deal’s guidelines, including a new stronger emanation cuts target in 2025. China promised to follow the U.S. lead and crack down on methane.
The agreement calls for “concrete and pragmatic” regulations in decarbonization, reducing methane emissions and fighting deforestation.
“Both sides recognize that there is a gap between the current effort and the Paris agreement,” China chief negotiator Xie Zhenhua said in announcing the agreement. “So we will jointly strengthen climate action and cooperation with respect to our respective national situations.”
“We both see that the challenge of climate change is an existential and severe one,” Xie said. “We will take our due responsibilities and work together.’’
Xie said using global carbon markets “will be highly helpful” in emission cutting, but that involves a negotiating issue that hasn’t been solved for six years and still hasn’t been settled in talks in Glasgow.