Canceled UN climate summit: Who will take over for Chile?

You could say that Jair Bolsonaro is guilty. Had everything gone according to plan, his country would have hosted the United Nations Climate Summit this year. Among other things, the meeting was intended to establish rules for the implementation of the Paris Climate Change Treaty and to agree on a fraud-proof international trading system for CO2 certificates.

But the Brazilian president does not believe in the annual UN meetings - because he questions climate protection in general and also does not want to be bound by international rules.

Therefore, the newly crowned winner of the presidential election urged his country in 2018 to withdraw the pledge as a firmly scheduled host for the 2019 summit. Officially for cost reasons. Later, however, the head of state declared that Brazil's sovereignty over the Amazon had been jeopardized by the planned meeting.

So a replacement had to come - and that was best in the region. If possible, the summits take place in different parts of the world, this time in South America. Finally, Chile's President Sebastián Piñera agreed to organize the meeting. The leadership of the summit should take over Environment Minister Carolina Schmidt.

The preparation period for the Chileans was extremely short with less than a year. Their plan to postpone the talks at least to the beginning of 2020, rejected the UN nevertheless.

Now Piñera has completely canceled the meeting as well as the previously scheduled Apec summit - but not because his government would have been overwhelmed with the organization. The blame is on massive domestic protests, which have already claimed at least 20 lives. A UN special mission is investigating allegations of human rights violations. "Given the difficult circumstances that our country has been experiencing in recent weeks, our government has decided not to hold the Apec Summit in November and the COP25 in December," Piñera said Wednesday afternoon.

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So another host for the summit has to step in again - this time probably with even less preparation time. It is unlikely that the talks will be canceled. However, it is unlikely that the event will take place at the scheduled time from 2 to 13 December.

Events covering more than 100,000 square meters

The organization of a climate summit is a logistic megaproject. Almost 20,000 delegates from all over the world participate in the talks. There are also many thousands of civil society representatives, scientists, managers and journalists. In total, about 50,000 people can come together.

They all need space for negotiations, presentations and press conferences. In Chile's capital, temporary structures were to be built in Cerrillos Bicentennial Park, which would have had more than 100,000 square meters of floor space.

This magnitude alone shows that finding a short-term alternative to the summit canceled by the Chilean government may not be easy. In addition: The summit participants need enough hotel beds, the transport infrastructure of the host city must be increased for the time of the meeting. Security forces must guard the meeting, which is traditionally attended by many leaders, and much more.

The UN hosted a UN climate summit too - although the international advertising impact, the booking of hotels and the shopping for food have led to money flowing back into the venue.

Germany helped Fiji

The climate summit in 2015 in Paris cost around 170 million euros. One fifth of the sum was borne by sponsors such as the energy company EDF or the airline Air France, but even such deals are viewed critically by observers. The last climate conference in Germany - which took place in Bonn in 2017 - resulted in about 125 million euros.

The example of Bonn, however, also shows a potential solution to the collapsed Chile summit: officially Fiji was then host, so for the first time a state that is threatened by rising sea levels and extreme weather events massively. But the South Seas state would not have been able to handle the big event. So Germany jumped in as "technical supplier" of the conference. They met in Bonn, where the UN Climate Change Secretariat is located.

There you will now also search for replacement venues in the current case. The head of the Climate Secretariat, Patricia Espinosa, initially published only a short two-sentence statement. It will examine "alternative options" for hosting the event, it says.

Germany, as the seat of the secretariat, can now offer help, but it does not have to. Officially responsible for the organization of the summit is the bureau of the Climate Secretariat. It has twelve members, and France currently sits on the panel for the European Union. The boss is the Polish Secretary of the Environment Michal Kurtyka. He had led the last Climate Summit, which took place from 2 to 15 December 2018 in Katovice. Until the election of a new summit president remains Kurtyka in office, which he had actually handed over to the Chilean Schmidt.

We have just been informed that President Piñera has decided to cancel the COP25 in Santiago de Chile. We are in contact with the UN Climate Change Secretariat and the Polish COP24 Presidency to discuss the situation.

German Environment Secretary Jochen Flasbarth wrote after the summit rejection from Chile on Twitter that his ministry was "in contact" with the UN Climate Change Secretariat and the Polish Presidency of the climate summit last year, "to discuss the situation." When and where the next summit will take place has to be seen. For the next time but everything is already regulated: The COP26 is between 9 and 19 November 2020 in Glasgow Scottish on the stage go.