Global experts and leaders convene for Vatican Climate Summit

Afghanistan floods, Credit: Vatican News

Source: Vatican News

Scientists, regional and local leaders, and experts from universities around the world are meeting at the Vatican for a Summit looking at the climate crisis affecting the planet with a special focus on how to effectively manage and deal with it. The Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences are hosting the three-day Summit entitled, 'From Climate Crisis to Climate Resilience.'

The meeting from 15 to 17 May brings together experts in the field of climate change together with city mayors and regional government leaders who are dealing with its effects. They come from the Americas, Asia, and Africa. All are contributing presentations in the meeting sessions taking place inside Vatican City.

The Summit participants acknowledge the seriousness of the climate crisis the world is facing and how it will deepen over the next few decades as global warming rises past the 1.5° Celsius danger threshold by the early 2030s. While the increase is expected to peak by the latter half of the century in response to global efforts to lessen the use of heat-trapping pollutants, other areas must be urgently addressed for 'climate resilience'. This concept looks at how humanity can manage, adapt, and survive the extreme effects of climate change for a safer, healthier, more equitable, and sustainable world.

In 2022, the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences started a new initiative on Climate Resilience bringing together researchers, policymakers, and faith leaders to better understand the scientific and societal challenges of climate change and recommend solutions for resilient people and ecosystems. The climate resilience concept is at the core of the three-day summit's discussions that aim to implement a three-point strategy: mitigation efforts to diminish climate risks; adaptation strategies to cope with inevitable risks; and societal transformation that fosters ongoing mitigation and adaptation measures.

The Summit participants will focus on related environmental challenges such as, climate change, biodiversity loss, and global inequality, while discussing and proposing solutions and approaches to manage and mitigate the effects of these realities. These efforts will culminate at the Summit's conclusion with a Planetary Climate Resilience Protocol signed by all the participants. Like the Montreal Protocol, the document will provide guidelines and actions for climate resilience. The protocol will then be submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be shared with nations worldwide.

In his Apostolic Exhortation, Laudate Deum, Pope Francis underscored the dangers the world faces due to the impact of climate change, affecting particularly the most vulnerable people, as well as the urgent need to work together to address the crisis. "This is a global social issue and one intimately related to the dignity of human life."

The summit comes as around 150 people have been killed and half a million are homeless in recent floods in Brazil. The exceptionally heavy rains that have pounded the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul since the end of April have flooded 31 churches in the four vicariates of the Archdiocese of Porto Alegre. Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in the Harmonia neighbourhood of Canoas and its 13 communities were also under water. In just ten days, a quarter of the expected yearly rainfall poured down, a change in the precipitation regime attributed to the heatwave recorded in the central-western and southeastern regions of the country, where temperatures are about 5°C above average. And the rain fell on urban areas completely unprepared.

Pope Francis has also appealed in recent weeks to the international community to help flood-hit communities in Afghanistan and Kenya.