Beijing is getting ready to “suspend talks with the United States on climate change”. Without further details, the announcement comes amid an array of retaliatory measures announced by China’s foreign minister on Friday, August 5, in response to the visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, US Speaker of the House of Representatives. Few days ago.
Last November, China and the United States created a surprise at the world climate conference (COP 26) in Glasgow. They then signed a joint declaration and undertook to “take reinforced measures to raise their ambitions (climatic) during the 2020 decade ».
Energy cooperation
The text notably provided for increased cooperation in several areas, including the reduction of methane emissions – a greenhouse gas that emits much more than CO2 –, the development of renewable energies and the electrification of fossil fuel-consuming sectors. . The two countries had also agreed on the need to organize regular discussions on the subject.
Nothing very specific, therefore, but the text nevertheless remained a strong political signal in the eyes of observers. Despite the absence of Chinese President Xi Jinping – who had not made the trip – and in a context of trade tensions between Beijing and Washington, the two biggest polluters in the world had thus reached an agreement. Analysts, however, remained a little suspicious about the real scope of the text.
Pulse movement
But cooperation between China and the United States on climate is not limited to this agreement alone, and has lasted for more than a decade. Already in 2014, the two powers had reached an agreement in which they undertook to reverse the curve of their greenhouse gas emissions, which are constantly increasing. This text had made it possible to lay the foundations for the discussions which should lead, a year later, to the signing of the Paris climate agreement, in which most of the countries of the world have committed themselves to limiting global warming below 2 °C.
Without additional comments from the Chinese authorities, it is currently difficult to estimate how the end of this cooperation will materialize and whether this is a shift in Beijing’s climate policy internationally. , or a simple gesture of bad humor.