Syria is set to become the final country to sign up to the Paris Agreement, the world’s 1st comprehensive treaty on tackling climate change. At the latest annual UN climate talks being hosted in Bonn, Germany, a member of the Syrian delegation told fellow negotiators the accord would be signed «as soon as possible».
The move by the war-torn nation means that all United Nations member states will have joined up to the deal.
And it leaves President Donald Trump «isolated» in his intention to pull the US out of the agreement.
The agreement, secured in France in December 2015, commits countries to holding global temperature rises to «well below» 2C above pre-industrial levels, requiring emissions to be cut to net zero by the 2nd half of the century.
Christian Aid’s international climate lead, Mohamed Adow, said: «When even Syria, with all its problems, can see the sense of a global climate agreement it really shows how ideologically wedded to climate denialism the US
Republican Party has become,» he said. «Like the playground bully that eventually loses all his friends, Donald Trump has isolated himself on the world stage.»
Although Mr Trump announced his intention to abandon the Paris Agreement in June, the US cannot give notice it is quitting the deal until 3 years after it came into force for the country, and it then takes another year to leave.
This means the US, the 2nd biggest polluter after China, will not formally have left the deal until 2020.