U.S. and China Sign Landmark Agreement on Climate Change Cooperation

Assessment by Michael Klare, Nov. 20, 2023 

On Nov. 14, the U.S. Department of State and the Chinese Ministry for Foreign Affairs published the text of the “Sunnylands Statement on Enhancing Cooperation to Address the Climate Crisis,” an agreement between the U.S. and China for deeper cooperation in overcoming the global climate crisis. The agreement was negotiated Nov. 4-7 at the Sunnylands estate in southern California by U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and China’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, Xie Zhenhua. 

The Biden administration has placed a high priority on enhancing U.S.-China cooperation in the climate field, viewing such cooperation as a means of both slowing planetary warming – a key objective given that the U.S. and China represent the world’s top two emitters of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) – and of balancing U.S. hostility and competition in other fields.  

In April 2021, the two sides signed the “U.S.-China Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis,” pledging close cooperation in this area. But Chinese President Xi Jinping suspended these collaborative ventures in August 2022, when then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in what was viewed in Beijing as a provocative move.  

Xi agreed to restart the process at a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, in Nov. 2022. Subsequently, Kerry and Xie met in Beijing in July 2023, without achieving much observable progress but apparently setting the stage for the more successful negotiations at Sunnylands in early November.  

The resulting Sunnylands Statement is notable for progress in both political/diplomatic and practical terms. 

From a political and diplomatic perspective, it reaffirms the commitment made by Presidents Obama and Xi in 2014 to exert joint U.S.-China leadership in rallying the international community behind what became the Paris Climate Agreement of Dec. 2015 (under which an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations agreed to take concrete action to limit global warming to no more than 2 degree Celsius above the pre-Industrial era) and apply it to the forthcoming 28th Conference of the Parties (COP 28) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Dubai, where further action to implement the Paris Agreement will be considered. 

“Both countries stress the importance of COP 28 in responding meaningfully to the climate crisis during this critical decade and beyond,” the Sunnylands Statement asserts. “They are aware of the important role they play in terms of both national responses and working together cooperatively to address the goals of the Paris Agreement and promote multilateralism. They will work together and with other Parties to the Convention and the Paris Agreement to rise up to one of the greatest challenges of our time for present and future generations of humankind.” 

Without such a commitment to “work together” in rallying international support for meaningful advances at COP 28, it is unlikely that significant progress can be achieved. 

From a practical perspective, the Sunnylands Statement is significant in that it calls for the resumption of a wide range of collaborative activities between U.S. and Chinese research institutes, companies, and government agencies in speeding the transition to renewable sources of energy and otherwise reducing emissions of GHGs.  

For example, both sides agreed to restart the U.S.-China Energy Efficiency Forum “to deepen policy exchanges on energy-saving and carbon-reducing solutions in key areas, including industry, buildings, transportation, and equipment.”

Both countries also agreed to “pursue efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030 and intend to sufficiently accelerate renewable energy deployment in their respective economies through 2030 from 2020 levels so as to accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation, and thereby anticipate post-peaking meaningful absolute power sector emission reduction, in this critical decade of the 2020s.” This appears to be the first time China has agreed to specific emissions targets in any part of its economy.