China's special envoy says world cannot abandon Paris deal

On Tuesday, China's special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua talks with US climate envoy John Kerry at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. FABRICE COFFRINI AFP China's special climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, said the world could not abandon the Paris Agreement on climate change, and his US counterpart, John Kerry, said countries should not use Russia-Ukraine conflict as an excuse to let up on the climate fight.

On Tuesday, Xie urged all countries to work together to fight climate change, as part of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Xie, who represented China at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP 26, said that they had to turn their pledges into concrete actions.

According to the International Energy Agency, global carbon emissions went up 6 percent and coal-generated power use went up 9 percent in 2021, despite some progress.

More recently, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has disrupted gas supplies and prices, prompting a number of developed nations to explore new domestic fossil fuel projects in order to boost energy security.

At Davos, we are facing an even greater challenge than before, Xie said while speaking to Kerry, who is the US special presidential envoy for climate.

Kerry said now that Ukraine is being used as a lever to make the argument that you need to have this energy security, which you do not doubt, but it's a headlong plunge to say it means we need to drill a lot more and build out more infrastructure. Xie and Kerry met many times last year and were instrumental in finalizing the US-China Joint Glasgow Declaration on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s, which was announced at COP 26.

Xie said at COP 26 we made a joint declaration, and what we will do now is to turn this statement into action and cooperation between the US and China. In Glasgow, the collective pledges meant that 65 percent of global gross domestic product is committed to keeping global warming to within 1.5 C this century.

He said that we need to move, accelerate and do more.

Kerry said that the US and China are working on a group to work toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

He said that we are going to work on the practicalities of how we reduce emissions and maybe China could help us understand some things we could do better. Xie outlined a number of proactive and concrete actions that China has taken in the past few years to accelerate its green transition, including pledges to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

With China hosting the COP 15 biodiversity summit in the city of Kunming, China has taken a leading position in protecting its own natural resources and encouraging other countries to do the same, he said.

China will no longer build new coal-powered plants abroad, according to Xie, who said China has reversed forest loss and will plant 70 billion trees during the next decade, as well as a drop in the country's energy mix from 74 percent to 56 percent in recent years.