Cop28: US and Chinese leaders’ absence threatens to undermine Dubai climate change summit

The absence of Xi Jinping and Joe Biden from the largest ever climate summit may be a sign that neither the Chinese nor American President has high expectations from the event, analysts have said.

Cop28 prepares temperature check on climate at Dubai meeting

“High-level leaders generally try to avoid meetings if they don’t anticipate the meeting itself being successful, as they don’t want to be associated with that kind of disappointment directly,” Josef Gregory Mahoney, a politics professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai, said.

He also said there were domestic political considerations in play for both men. Neither will be able to announce a climate breakthrough, and Biden cannot show that the US is living up to its commitments while Xi has to factor in the cost of meeting climate targets at a time when the Chinese economy is struggling.

Ma Jun, a leading Chinese environmentalist and the founding director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said the conference could set out actions and policies to tackle climate change, and both China and the United States showed they were determined to tackle the problem at climate change talks in California last month.

Last month, the two countries relaunched their climate working group. They also agreed to include methane in their respective 2035 emission-cutting plans — the first time China has made such a pledge.

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Cop28 prepares temperature check on climate at Dubai meeting

Temperatures have already risen by an average of 1.2 degrees, but Ma said this year’s conference should shift the focus from over-promising to achieving targets.

“That would be good if the first check-in on global efforts can identify leading examples and practices in achieving [the 2-degree target] … and later promote these examples with the aim of closing the huge gap between climate actions and goals,” he said.

Chong Jia Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said that the absence of Xi and Biden may not matter from a practical point of view, but it may “dampen the atmosphere” at a conference where the hosts have already faced accusations that they are using it to strike deals that would benefit their own oil and gas companies.

Cop28: what stance will China take on coal, renewable energy commitments?

But he said the most important thing was to achieve concrete and verifiable targets to address the climate crisis.

However, he warned: “Despite the fact that both Biden and Xi have a lot to cover domestically at this point, their absences may mean that there is no similar high-level push to achieve a breakthrough at a time when the world probably needs it.”