Turkish President Erdogan arrives at G-20 summit

Numerous letter’s signatories are also committed to the Compact of Mayors and the newly formed Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate Change & Energy groups, which capture the commitments of more than 7,100 cities in 119 countries representing more than 600 million residents.

The ceremony opened what is likely Obama’s valedictory tour in Asia.

China is responsible for just over 20 percent of global emissions while the United States covers another 17.9 percent.

Opening his final trip to Asia, President Barack Obama is expected to join Chinese leader Xi Jinping in announcing their countries are formally taking part in a historic global climate deal.

An agreement to cut emissions between the word’s two largest economies announced by Obama and Xi in China in 2014 paved the way for an worldwide deal almost 200 countries adopted in Paris in December of 2015.

Countries that ratify the deal will have to wait for three years after it has gone into legal force before they can begin the process of withdrawing from it, according to the agreement signed in Paris.

Senior Obama adviser Brian Deese said the joint declaration should push other countries to formally join the agreement. The White House announced Pres. Obama would speak about climate change on arrival.

If the deal clears the final hurdles, he said, “we’ll have a truly global climate agreement that will bind the two biggest emitters in the world”. The U.S. has criticized China over cyberhacking and human rights and voiced increased exasperation with Beijing’s growing assertiveness in key waterways in the region.

The Chinese official media has been saying that the focus of the G20 summit will serve as a vital platform for reversing the trend of trade protectionism and giving new impetus to global trade growth.

The routine red-carpet greeting took a confrontational turn on Saturday when a Chinese official tried to shoo reporters and even some top White House staff away from the president.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries are required to set national targets for reducing or reining in their greenhouse gas emissions. Many people have been staying in tent camps.

The G20 summit in Hangzhou starts on Sunday.

China is Turkey’s third-largest trading partner, though the two countries have clashed over China’s handling of Uighur minorities who share cultural ties with Turkey.

They join heads of state who arrived a day earlier, including Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma – the only African member of the G-20.

He will also meet his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip.

“It now looks like the Paris agreement will enter into force before the end of the year and that will really be light speed compared to nearly all other global agreements”, he said. In the U.S., Senate ratification is not required because the agreement is not considered a formal treaty.