COP25: Woman to lead summit first time in eight years

UNITED Nations (UN) officials have announced December 2 to 13, 2019 for the 25th session of the Conference of Parties (COP25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). COP25 will hold in Santiago, Chile. And this time, a woman will chair the summit.

It was earlier fixed to hold in Brazil, however, the plan changed after Brazilian leadership withdrew the offer to host.

Chilean Environment Minister, Carolina Schmidt, led a successful bid to head the presidency. This will make Schmidt the first woman to oversee the negotations in eight years.

My mother is hale and hearty ― Taye Currency

There were rumours that the conference will not hold until January 2020, to give the country more time to raise funds and prepare. However, the UN Climate Change Bureau ultimately agreed to squeeze it into 2019. The exact venue has not yet been confirmed, but officials say it will be announced soon.

Recall that the UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty adopted in May 1992 and opened for signature at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June, 1992. It then entered into force in March 1994, after a sufficient number of countries had ratified it. The UNFCCC objective is to “stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”.

The framework sets non binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries and contains no enforcement mechanisms. Instead, the framework outlines how specific international treaties (called “protocols” or “Agreements”) may be negotiated to specify further action towards the objective of the UNFCCC.