At the U.N. climate summit in Poland, countries agreed upon the Katowice Climate Package, a set of rules for implementing the Paris Agreement. It is the outcome of a complex COP, due to technicalities and difficult international context.  After two weeks and one extra day of tense negotiations, the rulebook to face and contain climate change got the green light.

Meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement could save about a million lives a year worldwide by 2050 through reductions in air pollution alone, according to the World Health Organization. Health gains from climate action would be approximately double the cost of mitigation policies at the global level, and the benefit is even higher in countries such as China and India.

The extra round of negotiations to define the rules of the Paris climate agreement closed in Bangkok without satisfactory steps forward on the rulebook due to be adopted at COP24 in December. “We cannot allow Katowice to remind us of Copenhagen”, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

The extraordinary session of UNFCCC negotiations to step up progress on the Paris rulebook opens on September 4 in Bangkok. The summit will last five

In mid-August, the leading Polish trade union confederations met in Katowice to discuss climate policy and work out a shared position in preparation of the UNFCCC COP24 conference in Poland in December.