USA, China Presidents A No-show at COP28

At COP28 in Dubai, leaders gather for the U.N. climate summit, notably without U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Xing Ping. Representatives like John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua will attend in their places. This is concerning to many of the parties attending COP28 because China and the U.S. are the biggest polluters.  Executive Director for the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, Doctor Colin Young, and Belize’s lead negotiator Ambassador Carlos Fuller weighed in on this issue.

Carlos Fuller

Ambassador Carlos Fuller, Belize’s Chief Negotiator

“It is a disappointment indeed that they would be attending. But recognizing again that I think that they are facing some challenges at home that they are dealing with not including the issues of the conflicts in the Middle East, Eastern Europe. I think all of those things are really taking time and in addition when they arrive, sometimes they take away the focus from the real work that has to be done and then everything is concentrated on what those two are going to say to each other at some close door. So in my respect it might better to allow us to really work while they can be doing stuff from home influencing what we do there.”

Colin Young

Dr. Colin Young, Executive Director, CCCCC

“It doesn’t demonstrate the kind of leadership that we would have wanted to see from the largest historical emitter in the world. I also understand that President XI is also not coming. When you the two largest, China is currently the largest current emitter and the US is the largest historically then obviously that leaves vacuum. Nevertheless you would have heard that they are sending emissaries who we hope that will bring the same level of leadership to the process and hopefully we can see a kind of coalition of support building from the other G20 and G7 countries to create the kind of action we want in the ground otherwise we may end up with more talk than action which is precisely what we don’t want.”