On Wednesday, November 10, China and the United States agreed to amplify efforts to fight climate change with “concrete actions,” in a joint statement announced in COP26, the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference that is underway in Glasgow, Scotland. The two biggest carbon polluting countries said their deal calls for “enhanced climate action in the 2020s” using the 2015 Paris climate deal’s guidelines, including a new stronger emission cuts target in 2025. China promised to follow the U.S. lead and crack down on methane. The agreement calls for “concrete and pragmatic” regulations in decarbonization, reducing methane emissions and fighting deforestation. Abias Maniragaba, an environmental economics lecturer at the University of Lay Adventists of Kigali (UNILAK) says that it is going to be beneficial because the main pollutants are going to invest in the carbon market, which will benefit different countries including Africans. Carbon market or carbon emission trading is an approach to limit climate change effects by creating a market with limited allowances for emissions. This can lower competitiveness of fossil fuels and accelerate investments into low carbon sources of energy such as wind power and photovoltaics. According to Maniragaba, the two countries use that approach to sponsor African countries to reduce carbon emission but their industries still operate concerning carbon credit – a permit that allows whoever holds it to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. He said that it is a big win for African countries including Rwanda, because they will be able to send projects on carbon market and get funding from the pollutant countries. Moreover, he said that the two countries are going to enhance technology to promote a green economy which is low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive. For example, he said that new technologies to be improved can base on reducing carbon emission by replacing fuel-powered cars with electric ones that are greener and environmentally friendly. He declared that since Rwanda has good relations with China and the US, the country is likely to get funds for its climate change projects if it enters the carbon market. A draft agreement being circulated at the COP26 summit calls on countries to phase-out coal power and to flesh out deeper cuts in carbon emissions by next year in order to reach a goal of limiting warming this century to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The text of the proposed agreement, released Wednesday by the COP26 president, Alok Sharma, calls on countries to submit by next year targets for net-zero emissions and plans for achieving them, as well as to boost shorter-term targets by 2023.
