Climate envoy in the US for talks
Liu Zhenmin, China’s special envoy on climate change, will hold talks with John Podesta, senior adviser to the United States president for international climate policy, in the US from Tuesday to May 16, according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.
Under the guidance of the consensus reached by the two countries’ leaders, Liu and Podesta will exchange in-depth views on the Sunnylands Statement on Enhancing Cooperation to Address the Climate Crisis and other bilateral consensuses and on promoting practical outcomes in China-US climate cooperation, the ministry said in a news release.
The Sunnylands statement was released after Xie Zhenhua, China’s former special envoy for climate change, met his US counterpart John Kerry at Sunnylands, California, in early November.
One of the major concerns in the Sunnylands statement centers on the control of methane and other non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions.
It said the two countries would immediately initiate technical working group cooperation on policy dialogue, exchanges of technical solutions, and capacity building, which would build on their respective plans to reduce methane emissions, meet their commitments to 2035 Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement, and support the other country’s progress in methane reduction and control.
The statement said China and the US had decided to operationalize the Working Group on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s, with one of its focuses on methane.
A news release issued by the ministry on April 24 said the subgroup of the working group on methane held a video conference on April 22.
During that conference, the two sides exchanged in-depth views on their respective methane emission control actions, as well as potential areas of cooperation and priority cooperation issues for the subgroup, the release said.
The two sides also expressed willingness to enhance communication and collaboration under the working group mechanism to advance cooperation in methane emission control.
During his visit to the US, Liu will also have talks on climate change issues with United Nations bodies, as well as local authorities and think tanks in the US, the ministry said.