Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues

In the beginning, we saw a pre-cursor to collaboration. China was a participant in the Major Economies Forum that President Bush launched in 2007. This forum later changed names when President Obama entered office, but it kept the same principles. It was a platform to test ideas for the international negotiations in a smaller format, and I think the United States and China cooperated to try to advance these efforts with other countries. When President Obama came into office he was very clear that the new agreement had to be something that worked for both the United States and China. So, after the Copenhagen climate conference, the agreement evolved into an arrangement that was based on countries making pledges. The United States and China both recognized that as the two largest emitters, their choices were inextricably linked, so there was a desire to think about how they could mutually enforce each other’s efforts. This led to the announcements in 2014 and 2015 about mutual recognition of each other’s climate change policies.

Billy Pizer is a professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He is a participant in the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues faculty research group on climate change.