The UK–China Cooperation on Climate Change Risk Assessment programme
The UK has a long history of working with China on climate change. There have been many bilateral projects, announcements and cooperation agreements over the last few decades, including a successful scientific collaboration on climate risk supported by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (later the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) of the UK and by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China.
Between 2013 and 2021, scientists and policy analysts in the UK and China carried out joint research into the risks of climate change, in a programme entitled UK–China Cooperation on Climate Change Risk Assessment. The aim of the programme was to ensure that emissions reduction and resilience strategies, policies and decision-making were supported by an evidence-based perspective on the risks posed by climate change.
The first phase of the programme (2013–15) brought together experts from the UK, China, India and the US. Insights from workshops in each country informed a 2015 report, Climate Change: A Risk Assessment. Researchers evaluated the risks of climate change and proposed a new model for climate change risk assessment, based on principles and best practice in other fields (such as protecting national security and financial stability) where significant interests are at stake. The report proposed three categories of risk for assessment: the trajectory of global emissions (‘emissions risks’); risks resulting from these emissions (‘direct risks’); and consequent risks of climate impacts interacting with complex human systems (‘indirect risks’).
The second phase of the programme (2015–18) began with the signing of a two-year Working Agreement on Climate Change Risk Assessment and Research between the China National Expert Committee on Climate Change (since renamed the China Expert Panel on Climate Change – CEPCC) and its counterpart in the UK, the Committee on Climate Change (now called the Climate Change Committee – CCC). The agreement focused on the three risk categories identified previously. This second phase of work resulted in the publication in 2018 of another report, Developing Indicators of Climate Risk, which proposed a proof-of-concept framework of indicators for tracking climate risks. The purpose of the framework was to strengthen the scientific basis of climate policymaking.
Building on the risk assessment model and indicator framework introduced in the first two phases, the programme’s third phase (2019–21), coordinated by Chatham House, moved towards implementation of a climate risk assessment indicator system. Work in this phase explored how climate risks could be integrated into governance frameworks. Decision-makers at various levels were targeted, including within international organizations aiming to incorporate appropriate climate risk indicators in the planning, conduct and monitoring of their work.
Senior Chinese officials have highlighted the programme’s role in supporting climate policy decision-making. The first legislation in China to specifically address climate risk and its governance, published by the Shenzhen municipal government in July 2021, followed the submission of a series of policy recommendations and extensive stakeholder engagement by the programme.
The first legislation in China to specifically address climate risk and its governance followed the submission of a series of policy recommendations and extensive stakeholder engagement by the programme.
A Chatham House research paper, entitled Climate change risk assessment 2021, was also published under the third phase of the programme. This paper, which set out the likely consequences of the world failing to meet the Paris Agreement goals, had impact at the highest levels. It was championed by the UK government’s Cabinet Office, was widely circulated prior to COP26 in 2021, and formed the basis of a series of high-level workshops that aimed to build understanding of climate risk among G20 governments.
In addition to a range of comprehensive and rigorous policy-relevant research outputs, the UK–China Cooperation on Climate Change Risk Assessment programme yielded new ideas, understandings and ways of working, and forged productive and trust-based relationships between colleagues in different countries. In this sense, it potentially provides a partial template for a wider-ranging bilateral cooperation framework in the future (see ‘Institutionalizing future UK–China cooperation’).
Confronting the inevitable challenges
Although this paper argues that it is both possible and desirable for the UK and China to expand their cooperation on climate change, pursuing such a path will not be free from challenges. Efforts may, in particular, be derailed by geopolitical tensions. From early 2025, with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the US is expected to take a more confrontational approach to China than was the case under the administration of Joe Biden. Foreign policy under Biden has been characterized by deepening tensions with China, especially over trade, but also by cautious engagement on climate change (see Box 2). This engagement is unlikely to continue. Moreover, the incoming US administration may put the UK and other allies under pressure to follow its own harder line on China. In short, the risk is that the Trump administration could take a dim view of UK–China cooperation, including on climate change.
At the same time, China will not be an easy partner for the UK despite common interests around climate change and the energy transition. Positions and actions taken by the UK in contentious areas could easily derail climate cooperation. China has previously warned the US that cooperation on climate change cannot be separated from bilateral relations more widely, and the same could apply to China’s view of its relationship with the UK.
Trade is a likely flashpoint, and certainly a point of vulnerability for the UK. China is the world’s leading supplier of clean technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines and EVs. The UK will need such goods in large quantities if it is to meet its own ambitious decarbonization targets. While the purpose of this paper is to identify scientific, technical and policy avenues for cooperating with China on climate change – rather than making recommendations for UK trade policy – there is no ignoring the fact that trade with China is a highly sensitive issue in the current geopolitical context. When the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, visited Beijing in January 2025, pledges were made at the resumed UK–China Economic and Financial Dialogue to ‘continue to exchange views on industrial policy’ and to ‘strengthen dialogue on standards, regulations and policies in the fields of automobiles, green and low-carbon development’. Even so, developments in the bilateral trading relationship, whether positive or negative, may well have knock-on effects for climate cooperation.
Joint climate action may also be impeded by politicians, media and other prominent voices in the UK who have warned against working with China in any capacity. The UK and Chinese governments have starkly different views on many issues, and cooperation on climate change may be cast by these voices not so much as bilateral action on a specific challenge of shared (and global) concern, but as an implicit endorsement of China’s positions and actions in other areas. Some sceptics may seek to discredit joint climate action by arguing that the development of any aspect of the bilateral relationship represents an unacceptable threat to UK national security.
Still others may cast UK efforts to work more closely with China on climate action as tacit approval of China’s ongoing development of new coal-fired power plants. Notwithstanding China’s ambitious emissions reduction targets and record deployment of low-carbon technologies, the country accounted for two-thirds of new coal-fired power generation capacity worldwide in 2023. China’s expanding coal fleet may not alter the rationale for concurrent climate cooperation, but it could make it more vulnerable to political attack.
To be successful, any new phase of UK–China climate cooperation must therefore account for these challenges and be designed in such a way that it is resilient to the inevitable political turbulence it will encounter. (See next section, as well as the ‘Recommendations’ section at the end of this paper.)