The Chinese Parliament on Saturday ratified the Paris agreement on climate change, the country’s official news agency Xinhua reported. At the closing meeting of a week-long session of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, the country's lawmakers voted to adopt "the proposal to review and ratify" the accord.

The adopted document said the ratification of the agreement is in line with “China’s policy of actively dealing with climate change” and will help it “play a bigger role in global climate governance”. The proposal added that ratification will also help in advancing “low-carbon development” in the country and “safeguard environmental security. China signed the Paris Agreement at the headquarters of the United Nations in April and announced that it aimed to ratify it domestically before the upcoming G20 summit in Hangzhou, which begins tomorrow.

The agreement, the provisions of which were decided in December 2015, has set a target of restricting the rise in the average global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. While 180 countries have signed the agreement so far, 55 nations accunting for at least 55% of global emissions are yet to formally ratify it, Reuters reported. China is responsible for over 20% of global emissions, followed by United States (17.9%). Russia accounts for 7.5% of emissions and India is responsible for 4.1%.