Johnson gets a made-in-China climate gift for Global Britain

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U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to emerge from Brexit as a player on the global stage is getting a boost from an unexpected place — China.

That’s because of last week’s announcement by Chinese President Xi Jinping that his country — the world’s top polluter — aims to become carbon neutral before 2060.

That pledge increases the odds that the COP26 climate summit — which the U.K. is hosting next November in Glasgow — will be a success, burnishing Johnson’s efforts to advance what he calls “Global Britain.”

A successful summit would allow Johnson to demonstrate “that Britain has not destroyed all of its geopolitical influence through Brexit,” said Nick Mabey, chief executive of the E3G think tank who has an advisory role as a “friend” of the COP26 conference. “It’s the primary motivator.”

Xi’s unexpected move didn’t come as a result of pressure from the U.K. — if anything, it was boosted by EU efforts. London has fraught relations with China over issues like offering asylum to 3 million Hong Kong residents after Beijing’s power grab in the former British colony and banning Huawei from its 5G network.

A U.K. official working on COP26 acknowledged one meeting with the Chinese in July was postponed, but denied diplomatic tensions had been the reason.

But Johnson is happy to take advantage of the momentum provided by Xi.

“What a fantastic thing it is,” he told a U.N. roundtable a few days after Xi’s announcement.

“The Chinese have given Boris Johnson a glide path and a landing strip for COP26,” said Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the U.S. and a former U.N. special representative on clean energy.

Before the Beijing boost, London was finding climate diplomacy a tough slog.

Through the hot, locked-down summer, the U.K.’s COP26 team kept trying. Embassies in more than 100 countries were asked to push their host governments to do more on climate. But the signals were not positive.

Efforts were “becalmed by COVID dislocation and distraction at the top of the U.K. government,” said Kyte. Just a few weeks ago, Business Secretary and COP26 President Alok Sharma told MPs he expected many countries would be slow to come forward and boost their climate pledges under the Paris Agreement.

Game changer

That all changed with Xi telling the U.N. General Assembly last week he would make a new and improved Paris pledge.

European leaders hedged, welcoming the move, but demanding more detail. Xi’s short address left room for improvement. China’s interlocutors — including the U.S. if Joe Biden were to win November’s election — will seek an earlier peak and concrete policy, for example a commitment to stop building new coal plants at home and abroad.

“We want to see the flesh on the bones,” John Murton, the U.K.’s COP26 envoy, said.

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Privately, U.K. officials acknowledge that the Chinese 2060 plan has given COP26 a fairer wind than was imaginable this time last year. Indeed, the forced delay to the summit, which was moved from this year because of the pandemic, has ended up significantly increasing the chances of a “historic” accord being struck in Glasgow, said the British official: “The potential upside is now extremely exciting.”

For Johnson — currently struggling to regain a sense of momentum after the U.K.’s widely criticized pandemic response — the climate agenda represents an opportunity to shift the narrative about his premiership in 2021. “It’s a huge opportunity for the prime minister,” said the official.

However, to gain any credit, Johnson may need to seize the agenda now and become a more visible international climate diplomat, given the amount of leg-work required ahead of the summit. “COP26 is a Champions League run, not a one-off prize fight,” the official said.

For Murton, who is charged with expanding the coalition of countries that will raise their ambition in the next year, Xi’s speech changed the diplomatic calculus.

“If the world’s biggest emitter has made that commitment, then it helps us make the case to other countries,” he said.

With that, a new, more proactive phase of British engagement has begun. Last week, Johnson announced an event to be held on the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement at which the U.K. government hopes a coalition of nations will come forward and raise their Paris Agreement pledges (the U.K. still hasn’t firmly committed to doing so itself). Murton will target other large, coal-intensive economies in Asia, such as India, with the message that China was acting in economic self-interest.

“There are huge economic opportunities through investing in the technologies that will deliver the low carbon economy,” said Murton. “That’s a case that we’re making around the world, because policymakers take that argument very seriously.”

“There’s a real opportunity for the U.K.,” to claim leadership in an area of growing geopolitical significance, said Anthony Browne, a Conservative MP who was an adviser to Johnson when he was London’s mayor and now chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Environment Group. “We’re known and trusted for being an honest broker.”

Brussels plays its part

The irony, during a week in which the EU began legal proceedings against the U.K. for breaching the terms of its Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, is that if any outside actors can claim to have influenced China and delivered Johnson his post-Brexit coming out party, it’s the leaders of Europe.

Xi’s announcement came just a week after he held a videoconference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel. At that meeting, and during the previous few months, the EU made it clear to China that movement on climate change was an absolute top priority.

Xi agreed to send his Vice Premier Han Zheng to hold regular climate talks with Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans. On Thursday, Timmermans told a meeting of EU environment ministers: “We all put a lot of effort in pushing the Chinese to move on this.”

“I think the China announcement will be seen by people as Europe’s play,” said E3G’s Mabey. “Not the U.K.’s play, the U.K.’s too small.”