December 2, 2019- Madrid – The opening ceremony started with COP24 President, Michal Kurtyka, handing over the leadership of the Conference of the Parties to Environment Minister Carolina Schmidt. Accompanied by UNFCCC Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa, Schmidt highlighted in her first speech as COP25 President that she accepts the role in representation of Latin America and the Caribbean. \u201cWe must promote a fair transition, without leaving anyone behind. This is the real transformation to sustainable and inclusive development. Those that don\u2019t want to see that will end up on the wrong side of history. COP25 has a clear objective: it\u00b4s time to act. This is not a slogan. It\u2019s a necessity. It\u2019s a moral, social and economic requirement,\u201d Schmidt said in her opening speech. Afterwards, in front of more than 30 heads of State, Schmidt opened the floor to the President of the Government of Spain, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, who emphasised that \u201cthe battle against the climate emergency requires courage and determination, solidarity and leadership, and, above all, achievements \u2013 moving from words to action.\u201d S\u00e1nchez then highlighted Chile\u2019s leadership: \u201cThese days, Madrid will also be the capital of Chile. This is Chile\u2019s COP. It is Chile that has organised this summit with a great showing of strength and leadership; and it is Chile that has promoted the Climate Action Alliance, by having chosen an appropriate universal perspective.\u201d For his part, United Nations Secretary General, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, supported S\u00e1nchez by highlighting the collaboration between the governments of Chile and Spain. \u201cSuch solidarity and flexibility are what we need in the race to beat the climate emergency. We stand at a critical juncture in our collective efforts to limit dangerous global warming,\u201d he said. Participating by video link, Chile\u2019s President Sebasti\u00e1n Pi\u00f1era assured that \u201cChile\u2019s commitment in the fight against global warming is firm, clear and permanent. For that reason, it hurts not to be in Madrid today. But I feel that my duty is to be in Chile addressing the hard times that we have gone through.\u201d Hoesung Lee, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of experts that advises the UN in climate change matters, asserted that \u201crising temperatures threaten our existence on the planet. Our reports show that the impacts of warming are much more serious than we previously thought. An immediate reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is needed if we want to stabilise the climate\u201d.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From today Chile\u2019s Environment Minister, Carolina Schmidt, presides the Conference of the Parties that will run for the next two weeks in Madrid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[90,43,5,12,140,89,17,6,7],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genesisarg.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genesisarg.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genesisarg.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genesisarg.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genesisarg.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2051"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.genesisarg.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2053,"href":"https:\/\/www.genesisarg.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions\/2053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genesisarg.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genesisarg.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genesisarg.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genesisarg.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}