The Government of Poland on Thursday announced the City of Katowice as the host venue for the 2018 United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference.
Poland was chosen as the upcoming President by the Eastern European Group, whose turn it is to host the conference following Asia-Pacific in 2017.
Though there were Several potential locations that were considered by the Polish authorities
as the host city for the event, Poland was selected which will make it the fourth time that the country has presided over a UN climate change conference.
Two previous Conferences of the Parties (COPs) were held in Poland; COP 14 was held in Poznań in 2008, and COP 19 was held in Warsaw in 2013. Poland also presided over COP 5 in Bonn in 1999.
On Thursday Polish Environment Minister Prof. Jan Szysko chose the occasion of a visit to Poland by Patricia Espinosa, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to announce that Katowice had been given the green light.
Mrs Espino thanked the Government of Poland for agreeing to host COP 24, adding that she looked forward to working with Szysko and his team to make the conference a success on all fronts.
She said, “2018 will be another important year for international climate diplomacy as nations move forward to implement the Paris Climate Change Agreement , indeed 2018 is when governments are expected to reach some key milestones.
“These range from finalising the guidelines for fully operationalising the agreement to taking stock of how countries are doing collectively in terms of being on track to realise Paris’s aims and ambitions over the coming years and decades.”