Prime Minister Antonio Costa will not be attending the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP26) World Leaders Summit this Friday, an official source in the Prime Minister’s office told Lusa.
A COP26 kicks off in Glasgowin Scotland on Sunday, and the Summit of Heads of State and Government will take place from 1 to 2 November. According to the agenda of the summit, Antonio Costa’s speech was scheduled for the first day, in the afternoon.
As of November 8, participation in COP26 Minister of Environment and Climate, João Pedro Matos Fernández…
The summit, which runs until November 12, will begin on Sunday with preliminary plenary sessions that will bring together representatives from signatory countries to the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The official opening ceremony will take place on Monday with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the host country, along with Italy, with “creative and cultural highlights,” according to the organization. This will be followed by a summit of heads of state and government, who will issue statements by Tuesday explaining their commitments and renewed ambitions to give substance to the Paris Agreement and limit global warming for the rest of the century.
Zero criticizes absence: Portugal’s role “justifies personal involvement”
Environmental nongovernmental organization Zero, in a statement, “regrets the decision announced late tonight,” which means that Antonio Costa is not attending COP26.
Zero contrasted this absence with “the role of Portugal and the prime minister himself, who have always justly chosen the relevance of climate change and decarbonization,” which NGOs said “justified a personal presence.”
Insisting on this, Zero acknowledged that Costa’s absence from Glasgow is “understandable given the situation the country is in,” but stressed that “this is a defining moment in the fight against climate change in which Portugal has shown an active role and must take strong leadership and ambitious at the level of the European Union “, moreover, he insisted when it comes to” image, reputation and credibility of policies developed on behalf of the country. “
By the way, Zero recalled that the first official international participation of Antonio Costa “took place in COP21, after the approval of the Paris Agreement“.
On the other hand, he acknowledged that “the topic of climate change and decarbonization was one of the main priorities of Antonio Costa” and that now “it deserves both the visibility and the opportunity to discuss the country’s path and prospects with other leaders. regardless of the nearest future government. “
