The United States special climate envoy, John Kerry, and his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, announced at COP28 in Dubai a collaboration agreement to “reevaluate their long-term climate strategies.”
Meeting with journalists following the adoption at COP28 of an agreement to guide a transition away from fossil fuels, Kerry and Zhenhua highlighted their good relationship on climate cooperation and applauded their Sunnylands alliance for an ambitious result at COP28.
"Here in Dubai, we have already fulfilled part of what we agreed to in Sunnylands (California), that is, to work together to promote the success of COP28. When the negotiations were getting stuck, we worked together and came up with some joint proposals to unlock the negotiations and facilitate the success of the summit," Zhenhua alleged.
Kerry, for his part, also highlighted China's efforts in terms of decarbonization, and assured that "China is not where it was in energy two years ago; it is manufacturing more renewables than any other country, it is deploying more renewables than any other country and is about to reach peak emissions much sooner than expected.
Now the countries, which have also reviewed some of their disagreements in recent years, commit to updating their long-term strategies on climate action.
"Both the Paris Agreement and the global stocktake underlined the importance of developing and updating long-term strategies to reduce emissions and improve resilience," Kerry recalled.
"Two years ago, the United States and China agreed to present updates to their long-term strategies before the Glasgow summit. We did so, and today we announced our mutual intention to again review and update long-term strategies going forward." , he added.
Kerry compared the climate crisis to the Titanic, arguing that "no matter how committed we are to this issue, if we can't move and generate more efforts in other countries, we won't be able to win this battle."
"All the big emitters, all the big economies are going to be part of this solution," said the American.
This transition, he stressed, is not only "inevitable, but it is essential to preserve life and keep the planet the way we want it."
Thus, "defending multilateralism and promoting the application of the Paris Agreement, we maintained frank, in-depth and friendly exchanges," he said, referring to Zhenhua, who agreed to applaud the friendly relationship and said that his eight-year-old grandson had traveled to Dubai to birthday wishes to Kerry, who turned 80 on Monday.
