"The United States and China will sign the Paris agreement on April 22nd and take their respective domestic steps in order to join the agreement as early as possible this year," the statement said.
The two leaders encouraged other parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to do the same, "with a view to bringing the Paris agreement into force as early as possible."
Obama and Xi further expressed their commitment to work together as well as with other world leaders to encourage the full implementation of the Paris agreement.
At the UN-sponsored Paris conference in December 2015, world leaders reached a consensus agreement to hold the increase in global temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Participant countries also agreed to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to only 1.5 degrees Celsius as well as fund efforts to lower greenhouse gas emissions.