UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Spain from Dec 2 – 13

News: The 2019 UN climate change conference (COP25) is taking place from 2 to 13 December in Madrid (Spain), under the Presidency of the Government of Chile

Facts:

Conference of Parties (CoP)

• The COP is the supreme decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). Countries that are Parties to the Convention are represented at the COP.
• The COP meets annually. The first COP meeting was held in Berlin, Germany in March 1995

Functions of the CoP:

• Review the implementation of the Convention
• Take decisions necessary to promote the effective implementation of the Convention
• Review the national communications and emission inventories (a database that lists, by source, the amount of air pollutants) submitted by Parties to the Convention

Recent CoPs:

• COP22: The COP22 was held in Marrakech, Morocco in 2016 to discuss and implement plans about combatting climate change in the lines of Paris Agreement
• COP23: The COP 23 was held in Bonn, Germany in 2017. A major outcome of the COP was the Talanoa Dialogue.  It is an inclusive and participatory process that allows countries, and non-Party stakeholders, to share experiences and showcase best practices in order to urgently raise ambition in nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
• COP 24: The COP 24 was held in Katowice, Poland in 2018. The biggest achievement was the adoption of the Paris Rulebook which establishes the rules and processes needed to provide the operational guidance for fulfilling the ambition of the Paris Agreement

Additional Information:

UNFCC:

• The UNFCCC is one of three conventions adopted at the “Rio Earth Summit” in 1992. The other two conventions adopted at Rio Summit are the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification.
• The objective of UNFCC is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
• The UNFCC sets non-binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries and contains no enforcement mechanisms. It outlines how specific international treaties may be negotiated to specify further action towards the objective of the UNFCCC.