Any issues the U.S. has with China will not be "traded" for concessions on climate change, U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry said during the World Economic Forum (WEF), as he discussed future action to tackle the climate crisis.

Speaking as part of a panel discussion on mobilizing action on climate change, Kerry was one of several high-profile politicians – including Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – to participate in the virtual WEF summit . 

"We're into the decisive decade for action and the evidence of urgency is literally all around us," said the former U.S. secretary of state, calling for international cooperation in the fight against the climate crisis. 

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However, he also said working with Beijing to fight the environmental crisis would not override any of the other disputes the two world powers might have.  

"Obviously we have serious differences with China," said the climate envoy. "We all know none of those issues will be traded for anything that has to do with climate." 

In his own speech to the virtual forum on Monday, China's president Xi Jinping had urged the world to eschew the politics of conflict and Cold War and come together to address the major issues facing humanity,

"We cannot tackle common challenges in a divided world and confrontation will lead us to a dead end," Xi said.

'Centerpiece'

Kerry went on to proclaim that climate change was the "centerpiece" of Joe Biden's presidency, as the new U.S. leader readied to sign executive actions to combat climate change.

Biden will reportedly pause new oil and gas leases on federal land and cut fossil fuel subsidies – policies that are in stark contrast to those of his predecessor Donald Trump. 

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Also speaking during the discussion was Alok Sharma, the UK's former business secretary and the current president of the COP26 Climate Change Conference. 

He expressed hope that countries would be aligned amid the COVID-19 recovery ahead of the climate event scheduled for November. 

"We are in a fight for the very survival of our planet, for humanity, for nature, for biodiversity," he said. "It's a matter of trust and countries have to deliver. But it's not just public finance, we have to get private money into tackling climate change."

In a separate address on Wednesday, Russia's President Vladimir Putin called for better ties between Moscow and Brussels to improve the strained relations, which he said had caused a fall in trade.

However, Russia's relationship with the West is under renewed pressure at the moment over the treatment of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. 

Putin also used the opportunity to hit out at the power of U.S. social media giants, saying their growing influence – as seen by recent interjections into U.S. politics – meant they now competed with governments.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is up for re-election on March 23, also made an appearance on Wednesday, discussing how to face down the dangers of coronavirus variants and whether or not vaccines would be effective in treating new strains. 

"We're in an arms race – except it's not an arms race, it's a race between vaccination and mutation," said Netanyahu.  

He added that governments worldwide "should probably expect the companies that are producing the vaccines at this point to modify their vaccines to accommodate the mutations that they don't cover now." 

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