US climate snub 'opens up the space hugely for China'

As Cop30 opens in Brazil, architect of the Paris Agreement Christiana Figueres speaks to Nick Ferris about why Beijing is stealing a march on the West in terms of green energy

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Donald Trump stopping the US from taking action over the climate crisis while labelling it a “con job”, will only see nations like China take up the mantle instead, the chief architect of the landmark Paris climate treaty has told The Independent.

Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who devised the roadmap to tackle global warming that was adopted around the world 10 years ago, paints an optimistic picture of the progress made since, despite political support for climate policies fragmenting in Europe, and carbon emissions continuing to rise year-on-year.

Speaking to The Independent in Belem, Brazil, where the latest UN climate conference - Cop30 - has just begun, Figueres laughs out loud at the suggestion that Trump’s anti-climate agenda could somehow hold back the rest of the world, particularly when it comes to clean and renewable energy. She cites China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but also the biggest producer and consumer of low-carbon energy.

“What the US has done is a choice; it is a sad choice, but it does not stop the advance of all others who are on the [clean energy] track,” Figueres says. “All it has done is open up the space hugely for China, who are completely delighted that they don’t have any substantial competition.”

Figueres’s approach is credited with building bridges between nations, which were key to navigating tough negotiations that eventually accomplished the seminal agreement between 195 countries to limit global warming to “well below 2C”, while striving for 1.5C.