CHINA and the United States said today they would launch a working group on climate cooperation as the two sides work to deepen communication and mend fractured ties, with a leaders’ meeting in San Francisco just hours away.

Xi Jinping and Joe Biden would huddle on the sidelines of the Apec summit in California for their first encounter in a year as trade tensions, sanctions and the question of Taiwan have fuelled quarrels between Washington and Beijing.

Climate has long been seen as an area where the two could find common ground, with US and Chinese climate envoys John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua meeting from November 4 to 7 at the Sunnylands retreat in California in a bid to restart stalled cooperation.

In a joint statement published in Chinese state media and released by the US State Department following those meetings, the two governments said the group would focus on “energy transition, methane, circular economy and resource efficiency, low-carbon and sustainable provinces/states and cities, and deforestation”.

It would see them “engage in dialogue and cooperation to accelerate concrete climate actions”. The two sides agreed to “work together and with other parties” to “rise up to one of the greatest challenges of our time for present and future generations of humankind”, the statement said.

They would also restart “bilateral dialogues on energy policies and strategies”, it pledged, and “deepen policy exchanges on energy-saving and carbon-reducing solutions”.

The US and China would “immediately initiate technical working group cooperation” on the reduction of methane, of which China is the world’s biggest emitter.

Beijing last week unveiled a broad plan to control its emissions of the gas, though it offered no specific target for reducing them.

But in their joint statement, the two nations agreed to “develop their respective methane reduction actions/targets” for inclusion in their 2035 emission-cutting plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs.

They also re-committed to the 2015 Paris climate accord goals of holding global warming to “well below” 2ºC and pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5ºC.

No decoupling

With temperatures soaring and 2023 expected to become the warmest year in human history, scientists say the pressure on world leaders to curb planet-heating greenhouse gas pollution has never been more urgent.

Success at the COP28 in Dubai will hinge on agreement between the US and China, the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters.

Asked about what he expected from talks with Xi, Biden yesterday characterised the meeting as a chance to right ties that have floundered in recent years.

“We’re not trying to decouple from China. What we’re trying to do is change the relationship for the better,” Biden told reporters at the White House before heading to San Francisco.

He said he wanted “to get back on a normal course of correspondence; being able to pick up the phone and talk to one another if there’s a crisis; being able to make sure our (militaries) still have contact with one another”. – AFP, November 15, 2023.