AMSTERDAM — China joined India on Tuesday in giving qualified approval to the Copenhagen climate accord calling for voluntary limits on greenhouse-gas emissions.
The official messages to the U.N. climate change secretariat did little to ease the pessimism that a legal international agreement on global warming can be concluded this year.
A one-sentence note from China’s top climate-change negotiator, Su Wei, authorized the addition of China to the list attached to the nonbinding accord brokered by President Barack Obama in the final hours of the December climate-change summit in the Danish capital.
India sent a note Monday that it “stands by the contents of the accord.”
More than 100 countries had earlier replied to a query by Denmark on whether they wanted to be “associated” with the accord. The delayed response by the world’s two fastest-growing polluters had raised concerns that without their concurrence the accord could fall apart.
China and India’s avoidance of the word “associated” was being seen as deliberate and possibly a step to distance themselves from full endorsement.
The accord, concluded in a flurry of last-minute diplomacy, set a goal of limiting the increase in Earth’s average temperature to 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit from pre-industrial levels. But it did not say how that can be achieved or how countries should share the burden of cutting carbon emissions.
It also said developing countries should be given $30 billion over the next three years to help them cope with changes already occurring in rainfall patterns and other effects of climate change.
So far, no proposals are on the table for raising or distributing those funds.
