China urges countries to keep word in addressing climate change

Some countries should keep their word if they want to reach a global climate pact, a senior Chinese official said Monday.

Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of China's National Development and Reform Commission, made the remarks on the sidelines of the ongoing annual UN climate change conference.

"So many decisions have been made in the previous climate talks but are yet to be implemented, and some countries have made many promises that they don't keep," he told reporters.

The broken promises are exemplified by the fate of the much-anticipated Green Climate Fund, which was agreed upon at the UN climate talks in Cancun in 2010.

Under the deal, developed countries should provide 100 billion U.S. dollars to poorer countries by 2020 to help them cope with carbon emissions and adapt to climate change. However, the promise has been largely unfulfilled.

"We cannot go on like this. Without political trust, people would lose confidence," said Xie, also head of the Chinese delegation to the conference.

"When we committed ourselves to reducing the intensity of CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 2020 by 40 to 45 percent compared with the level of 2005, we are implementing the goal step by step," he added.

"It's our hope that some other countries can also carry out the promises they made, because political trust is so important in multilateral negotiations," Xie said.

The Chinese official also urged all countries to be ready to make compromises for a global climate deal, as it could not be decided by any country alone.

"When some countries emerge as winners and others as losers from the climate negotiation, this means the negotiation has failed. When everyone loses, nobody can afford it. So there is only one way, which is to work together to find a win-win approach," he said.

A win-win solution requires all countries to show flexibility, Xie said, adding that the final result of a multilateral process is usually one "which no country might feel satisfied with, but all countries can somewhat accept."

Thousands of representatives from nearly 200 nations gathered in the Polish capital for the two-week conference, which started Monday to pave the way for a new global climate deal setting post-2020 targets on emission cuts.