12/09/2019: EIGHTH DAY OF COP25

The week starts strong at COP25 where the world’s environment ministers, leaders and international advisors must decide on important aspects of the world’s climate future.

Among these decisions that can compromise the future is Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. This Article is the one that regulates carbon markets and allows monetary transactions with greenhouse gas emissions, establishing the legality of what is known as carbon markets. In this way, if a country emits more than what is allowed, it can pay another to reduce an equivalent amount of gases.

The social pressure led by Greta in turn infects more young people who ask governments to “Stop talking, talking and talking and act… Children are dying!” The High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN, Michelle Bachelet, assures that she understands the anger of the new generations while in the Green Zone there is a certain skepticism in the air and urges that cities take the lead: “We know that if countries do not make the right decisions, cities will have to take a step forward in the fight against Climate Change.”

Climate Crisis messages echo to both sides as you walk through the corridors of the Summit:

  • Can you imagine running out of money for the whole year on July 19? That has happened with the planet’s natural resources.
  • Over time we lose memory of the state of our surroundings, our “base lines” change. Our grandparents used to tell us what the countryside and the sea were like, and this little has to do with what we see now
  • Ocean acidification is occurring at unprecedented speed
  • Victoria Falls, between Zimbabwe and Zambia, suffers its worst drought in a century
  • ”Urgently demand climate justice for the indigenous peoples of the Amazon.”

But there is also time to listen to important measures aimed at Decarbonization and Climate Change Mitigation such as that of Denmark and its new Climate Law that aims to reduce emissions by 70% in 2030 and has the objective of being neutral in carbon in 2050, or that of the Chilean Ministry of Energy, which has announced the early closure of coal-fired power plants. The banks have also joined the summit, acquiring a certain role with a new commitment by which they will finance the fight against climate change.

These days the commitments adopted towards the end of the week will be refined. commitments that must be very sensitive given the current environmental situation, the socio-economic demands and the future of the new generations.