Germany’s chief climate diplomat stresses need for “pragmatic” Chinese-German leadership

Germany’s chief climate diplomat Karsten Sach has stressed the need for China and Germany to show joint “pragmatic” leadership in climate protection in light of new disorder in international climate diplomacy following the decision of US President Donald Trump to pull his country out of the Paris Climate Agreement. At a conference by the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics) in Berlin, the climate policy director at the German environment ministry (BMUB) said Beijing’s and Berlin’s intensified climate cooperation at the G20 summit in Hamburg was needed “to show we are moving in the right direction and strive to find solutions” for mitigating and limiting global warming. Sach said this meant the two countries had to sustain collaboration on “getting carbon prices right” via a jointly developed emissions trading system, intensify common deliberation on e-mobility infrastructure and also expand on joint efforts to promote green growth opportunities in third countries, for instance in South East Asia or Africa. Germany and China may be structured very differently and disagree on a number of issues, but there also were many shared “core interests” for the two exporting nations that had only increased in importance over the last years.

For background, read the CLEW article Germany, China urge US to remain in climate agreement and the CLEW dossier G20 2017 - Climate and energy at the Hamburg summit.