We live in a time of deteriorating multilateral cooperation, and with the risk that more nations will leave the Paris Agreement on keeping the climate rise at 1.5° … Bishop Philip Huggins – a member of the United Nations Interfaith Liaison Committee – reflects on matters dismissed in the forthcoming election campaign, which – as they nearly always do – focuses on the hip-pocket-nerve. There are more pressing matters. One of the Psalms prays, “Peoples unborn will praise the Lord!” But this may not happen if we don’t leave those who come after us with a world of peace and a world with a sustainable climate.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Vatican commits to Paris Agreement
The news that the Holy See will be joining the Paris Agreement indicates that the Vatican will be stepping up its climate diplomacy. The Holy See has announced that, on 6 July, its Permanent Observer at the United Nations ‘deposited before the Secretary-General of the United Nations the Instrument with which the Holy See, in the name and on behalf of Vatican City State, accesses to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’. The announcement continued that the Holy See would be acceding to the Paris Agreement as soon as that treaty’s ‘legal requirements’ allow.