What’s new: China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua has been honored with the Nobel Sustainability Trust Foundation’s award for outstanding contribution in sustainability for 2022 in recognition of his efforts in fighting climate change and building cooperation in the field.
At Tuesday’s award ceremony, the foundation’s president Peter Nobel noted Xie’s participation in 15 consecutive U.N. climate change conferences, where he helped promote collaboration between China and the world in the field of sustainable development, according to a statement issued by the Chinese embassy in Sweden.
What’s more: Xie, who attended the ceremony via video link, thanked the Switzerland-based foundation for the honor and said he will donate all 500,000 Swedish krona (nearly $48,000) of his prize money to support global sustainability, according a video by the state-run China News Service.
“Cooperation is the only way forward,” the veteran climate negotiator said in the video. “Humankind will only have a future when we cooperate with each other for win-win results, in full respect of each other’s differences.”
A native of the eastern city of Tianjin, Xie graduated from Tsinghua University with an engineering physics degree. He led China’s delegation in U.N. climate negotiations from 2007 to 2018 and has a decades-long working relationship with his current U.S. counterpart John Kerry. The two helped broker the Paris Agreement, the global accord signed in 2016 to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021, he became China’s special envoy for climate change.
Contact reporter Wang Xintong (xintongwang@caixin.com) and editor Bertrand Teo (bertrandteo@caixin.com)
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