Genuine multilateralism, int'l cooperation championed worldwide

Climate change

As humankind has abused its environment and seen the consequences brought by climate change and COVID-19, multilateralism must prevail over unilateral interests, said Jose Ignacio Martinez Cortes, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

"Today we see that if we follow a unilateral path of not tackling climate change over the next two generations, then we will have lands devastated by the phenomenon of droughts or floods," he said. "Therefore, multilateralism must prevail beyond unilateral interest."

He added that countries are now faced with two major challenges: climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the United States always wants to "put its interests above multilateralism," and that could lead to "confrontation and wasting time in" addressing these two issues.

"If we continue to follow Washington's path, we will be moving through unilateralism and nationalism, and of course the hegemony of Washington. If we go along with what China proposes around the UN proposal, we can multilaterally confront these two (challenging) situations that we are undergoing," he said.

In this regard, the United States has shown an unfortunate willingness at times to deal with global challenges using small, closed groupings and small cliques, said Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies.

"It did so in the area of global public health by prioritizing the Quad framework -- and not the UN or the World Health Organization -- as the primary means for vaccine dissemination in the Indo-Pacific and other developing nations," he added.

"Global challenges require global solutions and global stewardship. Hopefully, it will bear this principle in mind in the context of exercising a co-leadership role to tackle the global climate challenge, going forward," Gupta said.

As the largest developing country in the world, China has increased its contributions to achieving the highest reduction in CO2 emissions in the world and will achieve carbon neutrality from carbon peaking in the shortest time in the world's history, said Ayadi.

China has already pledged to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, which is a much shorter time span than those proposed by many developed countries.

"This demonstrates China's commitment to making more contributions to tackling global climate change and building up its image as a responsible major country," she said.