U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry arrived in Beijing on Sunday, for four-day bilateral talks on the two countries' cooperation on climate change.

Kerry's trip follows a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month and comes a week after the departure of U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Given the scale of their economies, cooperation between the U.S. and China is considered vital to international efforts to avert the worst impacts of climate change. While in Beijing, Yellen stressed that both countries need to work closely together on the issue.

Kerry's visit also comes at a time when heat waves are sweeping the Northern Hemisphere, which scientists have associated with climate change. Early July saw the hottest global temperature ever recorded and an oncoming El Niño is likely to keep upward pressure on global temperatures, the World Meteorological Organization warned last week.

According to the Reuters, Kerry's talks with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua will focus on issues including reducing methane emissions, limiting coal use, curbing deforestation and helping poor countries address climate change.

In the statement announcing the trip, the U.S. State Department said that Kerry aims to engage with China on addressing the climate crisis, including with respect to increasing implementation and ambition and promoting a successful COP28.

The COP28 UN Climate Change Conference will be convened from 30 November to 12 December in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). It will be the first formal assessment of countries' progress towards the Paris Agreement's target to limit climate change to 1.5 Celsius (34.7 Fahrenheit) of warming. 

The assessment, called a "global stocktake", will set out the progress countries have made on their emissions reduction commitments, or nationally determined contributions (NDCs), made in Paris. According to the Guardian, the stocktake is certain to find that the world is way off track to meet its Paris goals. Due to that prospect, all countries are required to submit their updated NDCs in September that are sufficiently tough to meet the 1.5 goal.

To promote the COP28 and demonstrate the U.S. leadership on global climate issues will be one of the priorities on Kerry's agenda, Kevin Mo, Principal of the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress, a Beijing-based consulting platform told Yicai, a Shanghai-based media group.

Experts also pointed out potential areas of cooperation on issues such as the abatement of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

"First and foremost, it's just very important that it is happening," said Joanna Lewis, an expert on Chinese climate policies at Georgetown University. "I think it is important that some sort of positive agenda comes out of this meeting, even if it is simply an agreement to continue to meet," she said during a webinar on U.S.-China climate cooperation on Tuesday.

The visit also occurs about 11 months after climate talks between China and the U.S. ground to a halt following the controversial visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, the then-speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In a commentary, Chinese state media Xinhua said that frequent high-level interactions are the latest steps towards a detente between China and the U.S. It urged the two countries to properly manage differences and remain undisturbed by distractions so as to create favorable conditions for stabilizing their relations.

(All images via VCG, with input from Reuters, China Daily)

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