China and US should ‘use UN to build global climate change consensus’
- United Nations is the place to create a coalition of political will to tackle carbon emissions and other global challenges, says its envoy to Beijing
- Siddharth Chatterjee also calls for concrete actions from Washington and Beijing over coming months to tackle the crisis ahead of leaders’ summit
Siddharth Chatterjee, who became the UN’s Resident Coordinator to China earlier this year, said there were promising signs the international community was heading towards a low-carbon future, and called on the two powers to abandon confrontation and instead build consensus on climate change and other global challenges.
“Instead of confrontation, the UN can be the body to direct the focus of strategic cooperation between China and the US towards global challenges like climate change, pandemic control and humanitarian support,” Chatterjee told the South China Morning Post.
Climate change is seen as an area where China and the US can work together, despite their escalating rivalry in almost every other aspect of their relations. Last week the two countries pledged to work together to tackle the crisis, after meetings between climate change envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua.
While Washington has intensified efforts to rally its allies against China’s rise, Beijing has positioned itself as the new defender of the multilateral legacy system, highlighting its support for “the central role of the United Nations in international affairs”, and arguing that the UN – rather than the US – should be setting international rules and norms.
