State Councilor and Foreign Minister of China Wang Yi, Foreign Minister of France Jean-Yves Le Drian, and Secretary General of the United Nations António Guterres, met on the margins of the G20 Summit in Osaka. Envisaging the UN Climate Action Summit and the 25th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP25) to be held this year, they reaffirmed their strong commitment to enhancing international cooperation on climate change to ensure full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement. Taking note of the recent IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and IPCC Special Report, they stressed the urgency on addressing both climate change and biodiversity loss. 

1. They underlined the increasing threat posed by climate change to all countries and the urgency to scale up efforts to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis. They stressed that all countries should continue to uphold multilateralism, and inject political impetus into the international cooperation on jointly fighting climate change, to jointly promote international relations based on mutual respect, fairness, justice, and mutually beneficial cooperation. 

2. They expressed appreciation for the adoption of the Paris Agreement Work Programme at the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24) in Katowice. They reaffirmed their commitment to implement the Paris Agreement in accordance with the principles of equity, common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances. They underlined the importance of achieving a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases. They reaffirmed their commitment to update their nationally determined contributions in a manner representing a progression beyond the current one and reflecting their highest possible ambition, and to publish their long-term mid-century low greenhouse gas emissions development strategies by 2020 in the context of sustainable development. They looked forward to an ambitious and implementation-oriented COP 25 that continues to complete and improve the Work Programme, including to conclude the negotiation on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement and advance the negotiations on the common time frames for nationally determined contributions and detailed report on transparency, so as to inject fresh vitality into the multilateral climate process. 

3. They underlined the importance of increasing financing for nature-based solutions, which has huge potential to mitigate climate change and build climate resilience, contributing significantly to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement as well as sustainable development, but only receive a small share of climate finance. They underlined that nature-based solutions are actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems that address climate change challenges, both adaptation and mitigation, and simultaneously provide biodiversity benefits. They underline the importance of sustainably managing forests, which are carbon sinks playing important role in global biodiversity protection. 

4. They agreed on the importance for all countries to fully fulfill their commitments in the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement to the letter by mobilizing resources and efforts at all levels of society, to intensify short-term actions before 2020, and to speed up transition towards green and low-carbon development. They underlined that making finance flows consistent with pathways towards low greenhouse emissions and climate-resilient development at the speed and scale required is critical to drive up ambition for climate action, biodiversity protection and sustainable development. 

5. They emphasized the importance to leverage climate finance for developing countries, both adaptation and mitigation, and to promote the alignment of development institution practices with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Developed countries should fulfill their commitment to provide and mobilize US$100 billion each year for climate finance by 2020, transfer advanced technology to developing countries, and help them build up capacity to cope with climate change. 

6. They attached great importance to achieving a successful and ambitious replenishment process of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) as it is a key moment for climate finance in 2019 and beyond, and committed to collaborate with a view to swiftly strengthening its governance and to making it a more robust and efficient institution. 

7. China and France expressed welcome and support for the United Nations Climate Action Summit. The United Nations appreciated the efforts by China and France as the co-leads of the “Nature Based Solutions” and “Climate Finance & Carbon Pricing” coalitions respectively. The three sides agreed on the great significance of the Climate Action Summit to upholding multilateralism and as a milestone in the global climate governance process. They encouraged all countries to actively participate in the Summit, provide their visions of a new level of ambition and demonstrate real actions to materialize those visions. They expressed hope that the G20 Osaka Summit will provide political impetus for the success of the United Nations Climate Action Summit. 

8. They stressed the role of the creation of decent, high-quality jobs in helping guarantee an effective, inclusive transition to low-greenhouse-gas-emission and climate-resilient  development, and increase public support for achieving the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement. 

9. France and the United Nations note with appreciation China’s commitments to green the Belt and Road Initiative, in line with agreed international norms and standards of environmental sustainability. They expressed their readiness to cooperate with China in order to align related investments in infrastructure with the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 

10. Both countries recalled their determination to ratify and implement the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol and support improved energy efficiency standards in the cooling sector, recognizing that the fast phasedown of HFCs and parallel energy efficiency efforts can have very significant climate and economic benefits by 2050. They welcomed the release of China’s national Green and High Efficiency Cooling Action Plan. They agree to encourage countries to undertake immediate action to improve energy efficiency in the cooling sector globally. 

11. They agreed to work together on the link between climate change and biodiversity, and prompt a global response to biodiversity loss. France and the United Nations expressed readiness to support China for the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2020 to be a success. They reiterated their determination to actively contribute to the comprehensive and participatory process of developing the post-2020 global biodiversity framework launched at the 14th Conference of the Parties (COP14) to the Convention on Biological Diversity. 

12. China and France welcomed the recommendations adopted on 22 May 2019 in Nairobi by the Ad Hoc Open Ended Working Group as established in the UN General Assembly resolution “Towards a Global Pact for the Environment”. They will maintain a dialogue throughout the follow-up of the UNGA’s consideration of the above recommendations.