By Elizabeth Marshall ——Bio and Archives--January 23, 2024

Cover Story | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us

In 2018 Prof. Jean-Paul Marechel[1] authored a report titled “What Role for China in the International Climate Regime”?[2] This report is succinct and brings forward an explanation as to why China got involved in “climate change.” According to Prof. Marechel’s report:

Series:
BREAK DOWN: The U.N., ICLEI & The China Solution Part 1
BREAK DOWN: The U.N., ICLEI & The China Solution Part 2

Times have changed. 2009 and the COP15 have become another world. Fifteen years ago, China thought – or pretended to think – that the issue of climate change was a weapon western countries wanted to use against its economic and political rise. Now, China sees diplomatic benefits in hanging tough on climate change, on being in favour of the Paris Agreement. It was already true three years ago but is even more true today, after Donald Trump’s election.

The agreement appears to have a sufficiently flexible structure and modest enough aims to withstand US withdrawal. Some experts feared that President Trump’s decision would jeopardize the future of the Paris Agreement. Of course, this decision will have a financial impact on at least two institutions: the UNFCC and the Green Climate Fund. The United States used to give 115 million dollars annually to the first (25% of the budget) and had promised to give 3 billion dollars to the second (to this day only 1 billion was given under President Obama). Washington’s decision can be also a bad example for some countries that are not absolutely convinced of the necessity to participate in the Agreement, but which did not want to be publicly opposed to it.

Peking appears to want to take advantage of this situation and might well succeed. In January 2017, just after Donald Trump’s victory, Xi Jinping insisted during the World Economic Forum in Davos on the fact that all signatories should stick to the Paris Agreement “instead of walking away from it”. The same month, Xie Zhenhua, China’s climate envoy, said that his country was “capable of taking a leadership role in combating global climate change”.

All these statements must be connected to the so-called “China solution”. This expression was publicly used for the first time in July 2017 on the 95th anniversary of the........

© Canada Free Press