The Katowice climate summit (COP24) has concluded with the approval of the rulebook that will make the implementation of the Paris Agreement possible. These rules that will govern the operation of the Agreement will make it possible to measure, within a framework of common transparency, the efforts to fight climate change, adapt to its impacts and finance that countries have committed to make.

The Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, has valued the agreement adopted as “very important”: “All the countries that have ratified the Paris Agreement and have agreed on what are those development rules that allow us to make it fully operational and managing that process of learning and trust that must lead us to meet the ambition of having a safe and decarbonised world by the end of the century”.

Ribera stressed that this regulatory package “regulates issues as different as how to anticipate and how to monitor financing; what are the obligations we assume in terms of adaptation; how to reflect in national contributions an increase in ambition on mitigation or, most importantly, the heart of the package, how to report and use transparency systems as a fundamental tool to gain confidence in our ability to act on climate issues”.

Despite acknowledging that it has not been possible to make progress on carbon market mechanisms on the basis of a common UN system and that it has not been possible to incorporate more ambitious targets in view of the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Ribera stressed that “the political message that comes out of this meeting is very positive”. “At a time when the international community is finding it very difficult on the ground to advance the multilateral agenda, when some political leaders boast of their lack of trust and their willingness to break with the international community, the will to continue working cooperatively so that it is through the multilateral system that the great global challenges are addressed,” Added.