UN climate team in limbo as Trump still undecided

Bonn: UN climate negotiators in Bonn were left frustrated on Tuesday as the White House postponed a meeting to determine whether the US will stay in the 196-nation Paris Agreement to curb planet-harming fossil fuels.

As uncertainty mounted over the hard-fought pact’s future under US President Donald Trump, China’s leader Xi Jinping came to its defence.

China and France “should protect the achievements of global governance, including the Paris Agreement,” the foreign ministry in Beijing quoted Mr Xi as telling his newly-elected counterpart Emmanuel Macron in a phone call.

Mr Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, who alongside Mr Xi, was instrumental in the agreement’s birth in 2015, also entered the fray on Tuesday.

Big emitters like the US and China, he said, must “lead the way” in the fight against climate change.

China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from burning coal, oil and gas with about 25 per cent of the global total, followed by the US with around 15 per cent.

Mr Trump, who has described climate change as a “hoax” perpetrated by China, has yet to announce whether he intends keeping a campaign promise to withdraw Washington from the Paris Agreement.

Negotiators in Bonn had their eyes firmly on a White House meeting called to discuss the topic on Tuesday, but a senior administration official confirmed: “It’s been postponed.”

The May 8-18 Bonn meeting is meant to start designing a “rulebook” for implementing the global deal to limit average global warming to 2°Celsius over pre-industrial levels.