Madrid Spain – UN leaders and delegates arrived at COP25 on Monday in Madrid to begin a two-week summit on climate change, amid the warnings of the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, about the rapidly increasing dangers of a global environmental challenge
The conference was planned to take place in Chile, but the riots there saw the location change after Spain intervened on short notice. The South American nation continues to preside over the conference.
TThe United Nations Conference on Climate Change It began a day after Guterres argued that climate change can only be kept under control if carbon neutrality is reached by 2050, greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by 45 percent of 2010 levels by 2030 and Global temperature increases were limited to 1.5 degrees.
Guterres described the efforts of the international community so far to achieve these objectives as "totally inadequate,quot;, as he highlighted a collective lack of "political will,quot; and said that "the point of no return is no longer on the horizon."
"It is in sight and rushes towards us."
The procedures for COP25 began early on a cold and sunny morning at the IFEMA exhibition and exhibition center in Madrid, with a delivery ceremony that brought together officials from the host country of last year's COP conference, Poland, and Carolina Schmidt Zaldivar, Minister of the Environment for this year's presidency. Nation, Chile
In general, some 50 world leaders will attend, although a notable absentee will be the President of the United States, Donald Trump, who last year announced the withdrawal of his 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement from his country.
However, the president of the House of Representatives of the United States, Nancy Pelosi, will be present, leading a delegation of Congress.
The formal inauguration will take place with speeches by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Guterres and Hoesung Lee, president of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
A special announcement is expected from the Vulnerable Climate Forum (CVF), formed by governments of nations threatened by climate change, and highlighting a new financing mechanism to improve cooperation between these countries, as well as efforts to address the growing impact of Climate change in human rights.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Prime Minister will hold meetings with other EU leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron.
Chilean landscape posters flank the sides of the broad, tree-lined IFEMA access road on the east side of Madrid, where 25,000 delegates from almost 200 different countries will try to close agreements.
The key meetings will focus on how the emblematic Agreement on Climate Change in Paris 2015 becomes fully operational, in particular the mechanisms for carbon trading, as well as the necessary basis for the fresh climate promises that all signatories of Paris must make before the end of 2020.
Security is strict in the center of IFEMA, with more than 5,000 Spanish police officers on duty outside the buildings, as well as 450 private agents who support the United Nations blue-dressed agents themselves.
Twenty cyclists from the Moving for Climate NOW organization traveled 500 kilometers to get on electric bicycles and deliver a manifesto on climate change to the conference authorities.
Swedish teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who travels to the conference across the Atlantic Ocean by catamaran, is expected to land in Lisbon on Tuesday and arrive in Madrid by train or electric car shortly thereafter.
Local media reported that it could participate in an important demonstration on climate change in the Spanish capital on December 6.
