City in Brazil's Amazon rain forest to host 2025 climate summit

By Thaddeus Jones

Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, made the announcement about the Amazonian city of Belem being chosen to host the next climate change summit saying he's sure it will be a landmark event. The Brazilian president appeared together with his foreign relations minister and Para state governor where the Amazonian city is located amidst the world's largest rainforest.

The Conference of the Parties, known as COP, makes up the top decision-making body of the Convention concerning climate change. It focuses on how nations can reduce or reverse climate change through agreed policies and signed treaties, while dealing with the reality and negative impacts caused by it in the meantime.

The COP usually meets every year. The first such meeting took place in Berlin, Germany, in March, 1995. The COP Presidency rotates among the five recognized UN regions of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe and Western Europe, and others, while the host nationa and venue of the COP changes from region to region. In 2022 members met in they Eyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh; this year's will be held in the United Arab Emirates.

The most recent COP meeting in Sharm el-Sheik opened with stark warnings from the United Nations that planet earth was "sending a distress signal," as the lastest UN climate report revealed that the past eight years were on track to be the warmest on record. 200 countries then began talks on on the next steps needed to cut emissions that cause global warming.

Pope Francis at the time expressed his hopes the COP 27 would lead to effective, lasting efforts to deal with climate change, marking "steps forward are taken with courage and determination, in the footsteps of the Paris Accords.”

The head of the Vatican delegation at the COP27 summit in his address spoke of the need for "urgency and responsibility for concrete and far-sighted actions to face the climate crisis, which is affecting so many people, especially the poorest and the most vulnerable". Archbishop Nicolas Thevenin, Apostolic Nuncio to Egypt and delegate of the Holy See to the League of Arab States, emphasied four concrete actions needed based on the landmark Paris Agreement: mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage management, and education.

The Nuncio explained that political, technical and operational measures are no longer enough. “They must be combined with an educational approach that promotes new lifestyles, while fostering a renewed pattern of development and sustainability based on care, fraternity and cooperation.”

Archbishop Thevenin also highlighted the link between climate, food, and water and how together they “can and should play an essential role in climate policies and should be included in national climate strategies.”