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This week concludes with key international climate change discussions, as COP30 President-Designate Andre Aranha Correa do Lago emphasized China's crucial role in addressing the crisis as the United States radically scales back its support.
"We have to work harder with China because China has been able to give some fantastic answers to the fight against climate change," he told reporters in an online news briefing held by the Oxford Climate Journalism Network.
China is still one of the world's top two emitters of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming together with the U.S.
However, Correa do Lago, who is due to lead the COP30 annual global climate summit in Brazil in November, praised China for its solar panel push in particular. The world's largest solar panel producer has ratcheted up production capacity after years of subsidies, keeping global prices low.
Elsewhere, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa urged nations to prioritize efforts to help developing countries finance their shift to a low-carbon economy, at the opening of a G20 finance ministers and central bankers' meeting in Cape Town.
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, whose top officials have skipped two meetings of the Group of 20 nations held in South Africa this week and last, has cut overseas aid programes, raising concerns of a potential clean energy funding shortfall.
"Significantly more funding is required to limit (the) global temperature rise in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, and to do so in a manner that is equitable and just," Ramaphosa said.
Speaking of funding, countries took part in the COP16 event this week in a fresh attempt to generate the financing needed to halt the destruction of ecosystems and species, with many arguing for a larger role for the private sector.
Delegates discussed the need for companies who use the genetic coding of the natural world to design products ranging from weight-loss drugs to cosmetics to help pay to protect it as a dedicated fund was launched at a U.N. conference in Rome.
The 'Cali Fund', named after the Colombian city that housed the start of the conference last year, is the first effort by the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity to directly engage in raising money from the business community.
