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CCC to collaborate with Chinese counterpart to assess climate risk
The Committee on Climate Change has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with its Chinese counterpart, the China National Expert Committee on Climate Change, at an official ceremony at the Paris climate talks.
The MoU marks the start of a 2-year collaboration between the CCC and the China National Expert Committee focussing on climate change risk assessment. The two committees will agree a joint work programme to be delivered between January 2016 and June 2018.
Mr. He Jiankun, who chaired the event, said that “risk management is the key to combating climate change.”
The new partnership, which recognises the importance of robust risk assessment to inform climate change policy, follows an agreement by Prime Minister David Cameron, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Amber Rudd, and their Chinese counterparts during President’s Xi Jinping’s UK state visit in October 2015.
Sir David King, the Foreign Secretary’s climate envoy, commented on the importance of providing policy-makers with clear, scientific evidence to help in the very difficult task of balancing a wide range of interests in meetings such as the current Paris negotiations.
Speaking at the event in Paris, Lord Deben, Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, said this was an historic moment to combine the longer-term thinking that climate change requires.
Lord Deben said: “to cooperate with [China] … will help us to think not just about today and tomorrow but the day after tomorrow.”
