Century City and downtown Los Angeles are seen through the smog December 31, 2007.
Photo: Lucy Nicholson

MEXICO CITY - The United States and Mexico agreed on Thursday on a new partnership to fight climate change and promote environmentally-friendly forms of energy production, they said in a joint statement.

US President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, meeting in Mexico City, agreed to broaden political and technical cooperation on those issues by forming a "US-Mexico Bilateral Framework on Clean Energy and Climate Change," the statement released by the White House said.

"The Bilateral Framework will focus on: renewable energy, energy efficiency, adaptation, market mechanisms, forestry and land use, green jobs, low carbon energy technology development and capacity building," it said.

Strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would also be discussed, it said.

The statement said Mexico would host a meeting of the major economies forum on climate change in the coming months. The first session of that forum since Obama became US president takes place in Washington at the end of April.

The United States had offered its support for Mexico to host the Sixteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 16) in 2010, the statement said.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Editing by Sandra Maler)

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