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Syria plans to join Paris climate agreement, isolating US

November 7, 2017 at 2:19 pm

A protest calling for climate change on 1 June 2017 in Paris, France [kellybdc/Flickr]

Syria plans to join the 2015 Paris agreement for slowing global warming, isolating the United States as the only country opposed to the pact, delegates said at UN climate negotiations in Germany.

Syria and Nicaragua were the only two nations outside the 195-nation pact when it was agreed in 2015. US President Donald Trump announced in June that he intended to quit and Nicaragua has said it will join.

Syria’s delegate told a meeting of almost 200 nations in Bonn that the country, torn by civil war, planned to sign up for the pact that seeks to curb rising temperatures by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, delegates said

“We need everybody on board,” Ronald Jumeau, of the Seychelles, told Reuters. “We want the United States in too. We take no pleasure in the United States being out.”

Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the UN Climate Change Secretariat which is organising the meeting, said that Syria had not yet formally submitted any documents about its plan.

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