Can UN conference bring forth real-world solutions on climate crisis?

The 2025 UN Climate Change Conference will convene in November in Belém, Brazil and will include the 30th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP30). The latest edition of Catholic Religious Australia’s ‘Just Now’ newsletter explores the big issues for the upcoming COP, and why there is reason to hope that those engaged in the Conference can bring forth real-world solutions.

Noting that 2024 was the warmest year on record globally, and the first calendar year that the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level, Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, President of COP30, has stated that “COP30 will therefore be the first to undeniably take place at the epicentre of the climate crisis”.

The latest edition of CRA’s social justice newsletter, Just Now, explores the issues surrounding the upcoming COP30 meeting in Brazil.

This year’s COP30 coincides with the 10-year anniversaries of Laudato Si’ and the signing of the Paris Agreement.

The Catholic Episcopal Conferences and Councils of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean have jointly demanded that States use the summit to take transformative action based on human dignity, the common good, solidarity and social justice.

“The countries of the world have not responded with the necessary urgency. The Church will not remain silent. We will continue to raise our voice alongside science, civil society, and the most vulnerable, with truth and consistency, until justice is done,” they said.

This edition of Just Now explores the big issues for this upcoming COP, placed “midway in humanity’s critical decade in the fight against climate change”. (Ambassador do Lago, First Letter from the President of COP30).

Click here to read Just Now.