The Amazon is reaching the point of no return
If deforestation continues, the Amazon will lose its ability to produce its own rainfall and the largest rainforest on the planet will become dry grassland.
A guide to COP29, the UN climate summit taking taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 11 to 22 November 2024.
‘COP29’ will be the 29th Conference of the Parties meeting. This is the UN’s annual climate change summit, hosting all the ‘Parties’ (meaning the countries who are ‘party to’ – i.e. signed – the UN’s landmark treaty on tackling climate change in 1992). The newest attendee is the Holy See, which became a party in 2022.
It will take place over two weeks in November 2024, hosted by Azerbaijan in its country’s capital, Baku.
Each year the COP Presidency rotates between five regions, with this year being the turn of Central and Eastern Europe. The president will be Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources. Babayev previously worked at Azerbaijan's national oil and gas company, Socar, for much of his career.
COP29 comes at an incredibly important time for communities being devastated by the climate crisis.
It is already being called ‘the finance COP’, since this is the year the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance is due to be agreed.
The new climate finance goal, or NCQG, is the successor to the last funding pledge rich countries made to low-income ones, in 2009: $100 billion per year. Countries have roundly failed to deliver this $100bn year after year, leading to extreme mistrust between nations and a lost decade of climate action.
It is a matter of fairness that high-income countries such as the UK – who became rich from polluting coal-, oil-, and gas-fuelled economic development – support poor countries financially both to decarbonise and to adapt to a vastly more volatile climate.
And it won’t just be finance on the agenda. Critical issues to CAFOD and our partners, such as agriculture, food systems, land rights, health, women, and green jobs will also be negotiated.
Unfortunately, it is inevitable that there will be many issues left to resolve, even after COP29 is over. These will fall to COP30, held in Belém, Brazil in 2025.
We don’t yet know for definite where COP31 will be held. Though, it is likely that Australia (part of the Western European and Other States region) will be successful, following a strong bid.
If deforestation continues, the Amazon will lose its ability to produce its own rainfall and the largest rainforest on the planet will become dry grassland.
In the past, the community was regularly terrorised by armed men who would shoot indiscriminately, kill livestock and set fire to their crops and straw houses.
Play your part in tackling the climate crisis by making a swap in your life – and urge politicians to do the same.
A community near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia have come together to clear the tons of waste that washed up on their doorstep.
The agreement to "transition away from fossil fuels" is the first time governments have committed to move away from fossil fuels in more than thirty years of UN climate meetings.
In his message at the summit in the United Arab Emirates, the Pope called on governments to put the global common good ahead of national interests.
The COP28 climate talks have begun with countries agreeing on the first day of the UN summit how a loss and damage fund will operate.
Add your voice to Pope Francis' call for leaders at the UN climate summit to take the action we need to tackle the climate crisis.
The new apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum follows eight years after Laudato Si’, in which Pope Francis called for all people to care for our common home.
Speaking on BBC World News, CAFOD’s Head of Advocacy, Neil Thorns, said “the UK is leaving its international reputation in tatters”.