China, US pledge to enhance climate cooperation at UN summit

China and the United States on Wednesday pledged to increase their cooperation on climate action in a joint declaration issued at United Nations climate talks in Glasgow.

In separate press conferences during a UN climate summit, each country's climate envoy announced the agreement, The Hill reported.

US climate envoy John Kerry said that the agreement "makes a statement about the imperative" for the world's top two emitters to cooperate.

"It commits to a series of important actions, not in the long term, not in the future, but now," Kerry added.

China "has committed to develop by COP27 next year a comprehensive and ambitious national action plan on methane," The Hill quoting Kerry reported further.

While China's climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said that the joint statement committed both sides to concrete action.

Xie said that the two sides would work together on a range of issues including clean electricity, coal, cutting methane emissions and preventing illegal deforestation.

This comes as tensions between the two countries have been on display at the climate summit. The US has repeatedly said that Chinese commitments are not strong enough and criticized Chinese President Xi Jinping's decision not to attend the conference, according to The Hill.

Meanwhile, China has argued that actions are louder than words, and contended that it deserves more time to use fossil fuels to develop compared to Western countries who have been using these fuels for longer.

But the two countries previously released a joint statement in April, the US-based media reported.

( With inputs from ANI )