Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama have both agreed to ratify the Paris Agreement on controlling carbon emissions. (Photo : Twitter)
China and the United States have announced that they will both be ratifying the landmark Paris Agreement to control carbon emissions.
The two countries made the announcement during the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, The Wall Street Journal reported. According to Brian Deese, a senior adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, the move to ratify the agreement serves as the biggest turning point for both nations to come together to combat climate change.
The ratification of the agreement, which was announced at the and of the Paris Climate Change Summit in December, has gone through significant hurdles. Negotiators from the U.S. tried to lobby for changes in the agreement's stipulations such that the individual emission targets would not be legally binding after 2020.
U.S. Republican legislators also wanted any international agreement with legally binding clauses and sanctions should first be approved by the Congress.
The UN eventually adopted a less binding mechanism that allowed signatory countries to issue their own targets but is required to regularly disclose their progress in meeting these. The organization said that pressure from other nations and global attention would serve to force compliance.
China said that it plans to peak emissions by 2030, though experts said that it is likely to meet the target before that.
To finally take effect, the agreement, which was signed by 170 countries, needs to be further ratified by at least 55 countries representing 55 percent of emissions. Being the world's two biggest producers of greenhouse gasses, China and the U.S. account for almost 40 percent of total global emissions, the BBC reported.
Aside from the ratification of the main agreement, China, and the U.S. also agreed to support a proposed deal to place international limitations on aircraft emissions. The greenhouse gases released by aircraft accounts for 2 percent of global emissions, with the U.S. owning to the largest share.
Obama himself expressed confidence that the U.S. and China's move to ratify the Paris Agreement will help push it further to achieve its goal of combating climate change. In an address delivered during the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's World Conservation Congress in Hawaii, he stressed that a vibrant world economy should not be in conflict with a healthy planet.
