We're just two weeks past the US election, and the results and his cabinet nominations have already begun to upend global geopolitics around climate change.

This week, several major players, including Russia and China, changed their tune and advocated for the US to remain committed to the Paris Climate Accords. Here’s what you need to know about the shifting geopolitical sands surrounding global climate change and what impact it might have on the feasibility of keeping the planet from hitting the 1.5-degree C threshold.

Russia backs Paris Accords, Urges US to Stay

Earlier this week, a Russian envoy in attendance at COP29 in Azerbaijan said in an interview, “There are some voices in Russia calling for the withdrawal from the Paris accord. This is wrong. There is no way back,” Putin’s special representative for international cooperation in sustainability, Boris Titov said.

“There’s growing concern over leaders around the world getting skeptical about climate change. Russia, the world’s fourth-biggest emitter, thinks climate talks should not be “interrupted despite political differences,” Titov said,” according to Bloomberg. He added that he hoped that Trump would not “make spontaneous decisions that will harm the climate agenda,” pointing out that climate change is an “existential problem for humanity.”

While there’s very little that Russia and the US can agree upon, especially with the continued war in Ukraine and ongoing US sanctions against the country, it seems that there might be an opening for common ground on climate change. Russia has sent more than 900 representatives to COP29 this year, while the US presence is minimal, with only 405 delegates there, according to CarbonBrief. Russia only joined the agreement in 2019 and is aiming for net zero emissions by 2050.

China Is “Concerned” about Trump’s Climate Impact

Also this week, China’s top climate envoy, Liu Zhenmin, told reporters that the country is concerned about what kind of upheaval Trump could bring in the fight against climate change, according to Politico.

“Everybody’s concerned about next steps … whether after the U.S. election, U.S. climate policy will or won’t change,” said Liu. “But most colleagues [here at COP] still feel that regardless if a country’s climate policy changes or doesn’t change, international multilateral climate cooperation should continue."

Like relations with Russia, the relationship between China and the US is tenuous at best. The one place where the US and China have been able to cooperate, however, has been on climate policies. China is currently the world's largest greenhouse gas polluter, but as The Atlantic points out, it's also the leader in clean tech.

Should the US withdraw again and throw up tariffs that are all but guaranteed to raise prices for Americans, it leaves a huge opportunity for China to step into a role as a climate change leader, which has both positives and negatives. For one, as The Atlantic points out, without the US as a leader in climate change, China can expand its “green soft power” or influence on environmental policies and behaviors through environmental leadership.

Should Trump once again withdraw from the Paris agreement, he’ll exacerbate the climate and green tech gap that he implemented the first time he decided to withdraw. China called Trump’s previous withdrawal from the Paris accords a “retreat from the common aspiration of mankind for a low-carbon future,” according to this Washington Post story from 2017.

Why it Matters

The statements from Russia and China reflect larger concerns from around the world about what could happen in the fight against climate change should Trump go through with his campaign promise to withdraw from the agreement. Typically, both countries have been obstructive when it comes to cutting emissions, but their tunes are changing slightly now that a second Trump presidency is on the horizon.

There's also more than meets the eye here, as a US departure from the agreement would leave a vacuum of international collaboration at a time when both Russia and China are trying to expand their influence on the global stage. While removing the US from the equation sounds like it would be a good thing for the two ambitious countries, it could dismantle much of the cross-border work and planning that both countries are doing to cement their geopolitical and economic leadership further. Climate negotiations are a platform for geopolitical bargaining. If the US exits global climate agreements, its absence reshapes the diplomatic power balance, limiting opportunities for Russia and China to negotiate with or counterbalance the US on broader geopolitical issues.

When Trump again reiterated this promise recently, leaders around the world were not surprised, according to reporting at Politico, but rather concerned. As Politico noted, it not only has implications for China and Russia. “This has implications for the blocs of countries seeking to shape the negotiations — including Pacific island nations threatened by the rising seas, developing polluters such as India that have bristled at Western calls for sharper pollution cuts, and European governments that have typically allied themselves with the U.S. in urging faster progress.”

At this point, there’s nothing set in stone (yet), but one thing is certain: Trump deeply believes he’s been handed an “unprecedented and powerful mandate” via the election, though the margins have shrunk significantly as remaining votes are counted. His spokespeople have repeatedly underlined his plans to follow through on his election threats, including withdrawing from the Paris accord and the U.N. according to reporting at Politico. "The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail," Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team, told Politico via email. “He will deliver.”

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