WASHINGTON (CU)_US President Joe Biden has invited 40 world leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to participate in the historical climate talks of his administration, which Washington hopes would help deepen and accelerate global efforts to tackle climate change.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart President Vladimir Putin, as well as leaders from countries facing gravest immediate threats, including Bangladesh and Marshall Islands, and countries which have demonstrated good climate behaviour, such as Bhutan and certain Scandinavian countries, are among those invited for the event, which will be held virtually on 22 and 23 April.
The session will fulfil a campaign pledge of the Biden administration to make climate change a priority, as the President is seeking to revive a US-convened forum of the world’s largest economies on climate.
An administration official told AP News that Washington intentionally looked beyond its international partners for the summit, reaching out to some of the key leaders to have “tough” and “important” conversations.
“Given how important … this issue is to the entire world, we have to be willing to talk about it and we have to be willing to talk about it at the high levels,” the official said.
Former US President Donald Trump mocked the science behind climate change and global warming, as he withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris climate accords. However, President Biden signed an executive order to re-join the country to the global forum, as one of his first actions since he was sworn in as President on 20 January.
Accordingly, next month’s summit will be the first major international climate discussions to be attended by a US leader in more than 4 years, and the Biden administration hopes the forum will encourage other countries to use it as a platform to announce tougher emission targets and other commitments, ahead of the UN global climate talks in Glasgow in in November.
An official said that the US summit is about “sending a signal from the US perspective about how serious we are, and putting our own cards on the table in a significant way… hoping that countries will join us.”
