Climate Summit in New York to miss leaders from China and India

World leaders will meet in New York later this month for the UN Climate Summit 2014 and there are concerns within the international community with the leaders of two of the world’s three biggest emitters in China and India not attending.

The meeting is scheduled for 23 September at the UN headquarters but Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not participate.

Xi and Modi oversee the first and third-leading greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting countries on the planet respectively and their decision not to attend has cast some doubt on the summit’s potential to make progress ahead of the major UN climate summit in Paris next year.

Qin Gang, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, claimed that the identity of the Chinese delegation to the summit would not necessarily reflect the country’s commitment to environmental protection.

There is optimism from various politicians, leading NGOs and activists that the New York meeting can deliver much needed momentum ahead of the next major summit in Lima later this year and the Paris Summit in late 2015, when a new legally binding international climate agreement is due to be signed.

Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, is hoping that the summit will galvanise ongoing efforts for a global climate deal to follow the Kyoto Protocol which expired in 2012.

The summit will not be an official negotiating session but will bring together world leaders, business executives, and major activist groups to accelerate the debate.

The White House confirmed in July that President Obama will attend the summit and is scheduled to speak at the day-long meeting.

The U.S. is the world’s second largest GHG emitter but Obama’s Climate Action Plan has reduced emissions and boosted the share of renewable power in the country’s energy mix.

The new We Mean Business initiative that aims at bringing together green business associations from around the world will be launched at the summit. The project includes BSR (Business for Social Responsibility), The B Team, CDP, Ceres, The Climate Group, Prince of Wales's Corporate Leaders Group and World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).