COP26: US and China issue a surprise statement pledging increased collaboration on climate
- ‘We need to raise ambition and we need to take action in this decisive decade,’ US envoy John Kerry says
- China and US held more than 30 meetings over the last 10 months to develop the initiative, Beijing’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua says
The United States and China unveiled a surprise commitment to ramp up collaboration on climate action on Wednesday, with Washington’s top climate envoy saying that despite tensions between the two countries, cooperation was the “only way to get things done.”
Announced in the closing days of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the joint declaration includes commitments to cooperate on cutting methane emissions; protecting forests; improving technology and information exchanges; and ramping up the use of renewable energies.
As the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, the US and China need to “show the way”, Kerry said. “We need to raise ambition and we need to take action in this decisive decade.”
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The joint declaration also announced the establishment of a working group tasked with enhancing climate action in the 2020s.