Formal deal on China-UK green efforts encouraged

The United Kingdom should sign a formal bilateral deal with China enabling government-backed climate cooperation, a new research paper said.

The paper titled "An Agenda for UK-China Climate Cooperation: Why Joint Action Can and Should Transcend Political Challenges" was released on Jan 16 by Chatham House, an independent London-based policy institute.

Noting the good momentum in bilateral relations, as leaders and senior officials from both sides have held talks since the UK Labour Party took power in July, and that climate change is frequently cited as an area of mutual interest during the high-level meetings, the paper argued for "deepening and institutionalizing" climate cooperation through a "formal bilateral cooperation framework".

"A bilateral, government-to-government agreement to cooperate on climate change should underpin this mechanism, enabling bolder and more confident engagement and elevating the status of policy proposals," the paper stated.

"Cooperation should be grounded in well-defined, practical activities of common interest with clear outcomes that can be tracked and evaluated," it added.

China and the UK have agreed to discuss such an arrangement, the paper noted.

When the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, visited China earlier this month, pledges were made at the 11th China-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue held in Beijing.

A policy outcome paper published by HM Treasury, the UK's economic and finance ministry, said, "Both sides commit to holding regular dialogue on science and technology … noting the importance of cooperation on global challenges, such as climate change, health, environmental protection, energy security, and food security."

Pursuing such a cooperative path will not be free from challenges, the Chatham House paper acknowledged, particularly considering the evermore turbulent geopolitical landscape. Yet, the paper called for a "resilient" design of the cooperation framework.

"To be successful, any new phase of UK-China climate cooperation must therefore account for these challenges and be designed in such a way that it is resilient to the inevitable political turbulence it will encounter," it said.

Areas for cooperation were also discussed, including carbon budgeting, emissions trading, the deployment of low-carbon technologies, climate risk and climate change adaptation, and supporting international climate action.

"The UK and China have a long history of successful collaboration on climate change. With rising geopolitical instability and a retrenchment of climate leadership in some quarters, they have an opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of bilateral cooperation, and in so doing, shore up multilateralism and accelerate practical climate action, which is in all our interests," said Guo Jiangwen, co-author of the paper and senior research fellow at Chatham House.