China
warns Trump against abandoning climate change deal
Beijing
pushes for progress to prevent global warming, saying world wants to
co-operate
NOVEMBER 11, 2016
by: Pilita Clark in Marrakesh
China has warned
Donald Trump that he will be defying the wishes of the entire planet
if he acts on his vow to back away from the Paris climate agreement
after he becomes US president next January.
In a sign of how far
the world has shifted in recognising the need to tackle global
warming, Beijing — once seen as an obstructive force in UN climate
talks — is now leading the push for progress by responding to fears
that Mr Trump would pull the US out of the landmark accord.
“It is global
society’s will that all want to co-operate to combat climate
change,” a senior Beijing negotiator said in Marrakesh on Friday,
at the first round of UN talks since the Paris deal was sealed last
December. The Chinese negotiators added that “any movement by the
new US government” would not affect their transition towards
becoming a greener economy.
India also joined in
the warnings, saying Mr Trump’s appointment would force countries
to reassess an accord hailed as an end to the fossil fuel era.
“Everyone will
rethink how this whole process is going to unfold,” India’s chief
negotiator, Ravi Prasad, told the Financial Times.
Recalling the way
support for the earlier Kyoto protocol climate treaty crumbled after
it was abandoned by another Republican president, George W Bush, Mr
Prasad said he feared the Paris accord could suffer “a contagious
disease that spreads” if the US withdrew.
Mr Trump’s
sweeping victory on Tuesday has shaken what had appeared to be an
unstoppable bout of global action to tackle climate change in the
run-up to the two-week Marrakesh talks, which began on Monday.
Governments struck
the first climate deal for aviation in October, just days before
agreeing to phase out planet-warming hydrofluorocarbon chemicals used
in air-conditioners.
The Moroccan hosts
of this week’s talks had been planning a celebratory meeting to cap
this unprecedented bout of activity. Instead, organisers awoke on
Wednesday morning to find the world’s wealthiest country had a
president-elect who has called global warming a hoax, pledged to
“cancel” the Paris agreement and vowed to stop US funding of UN
climate programmes entirely.
“They were in
absolute shock,” said one person who saw Moroccan officials on
Wednesday morning.
Adnan Amin, the
director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency, said
“a sense of helplessness” had pervaded the Marrakesh talks, and
“a certain amount of fear”.
The EU and Japan
also reaffirmed their commitment to the agreement, which requires all
countries to come up with a plan to curb climate change in order to
stop global temperatures from rising more than 2C from pre-industrial
times.
But neither they nor
China were willing to offer extra cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to
fill the vacuum a US withdrawal would create, nor additional money
for an agreement requiring billions of dollars in public and private
funds to be channelled from rich to poor countries to tackle climate
change.
At 3am in the
morning I started to hear the [US election] results and I said, ‘No,
you’re having a nightmare, go back to sleep’. When I got up and
realised it was true, I walked around in a daze
A developing country
participant
“If the US changes
its position that would be very serious for us, especially the aspect
of the finance,” said Shigeru Ushio, a Japanese foreign ministry
official.
As delegates
absorbed the ramifications of Mr Trump’s sweeping victory, many
swapped stories of how the result had hit them.
“At 3am in the
morning I started to hear the results and I said, ‘No, you’re
having a nightmare, go back to sleep’,” said one developing
country participant. “When I got up and realised it was true, this
was really, really happening, I walked around in a daze. I think a
lot of us were.”
The negotiations
have continued nonetheless and some countries have been adamant that
the US election result should not interfere with a meeting that is
due to start negotiating a raft of important rules for how the Paris
agreement will operate.
“We’re talking
about the big challenge of climate change,” said Russia’s lead
negotiator, Oleg Shamanov. “This issue is bigger than life. This is
a long-term issue, longer than any mandate of any president of
country X or Z, even if that country is a big one.”
The prospect of the
US withdrawing from the Paris agreement has been a topic of endless
discussion beneath the sun-shaded walkways in the temporary
convention centre built for the Marrakesh meeting.
A pullout would take
four years, unless Mr Trump chose to take the US out of the accord’s
parent treaty, the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in
which case it could only take a year.
That would be a
highly provocative move, said international climate law expert,
Farhana Yamin. “It would escalate non-cooperation to the highest
level possible.”
But as the first
week of the talks drew to a close, a mood of defiance was emerging
among some delegates who said past US retreats from UN climate action
had only spurred other countries’ determination to unify and
proceed.
“The talk in the
corridors is, ‘OK, this is not going to stop us from moving
forward, we will just redouble our efforts’,” said Hugh Sealy, a
lead negotiator for an alliance of small island countries.
“This is still an
existential threat,” he said. “I still want to pass on that
little house I have on the coast in Grenada to my children and the
rest of us are going to have to step up.”
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