The Conference of the Parties, or COP, is the supreme decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Its 195 member countries meet annually for 2 weeks to tackle the challenge of climate change and supervise implementation of the agreed measures.

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The UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) was held from 2 to 13 December in Madrid (Spain) under the presidency of Chile. This year was the 25^th edition of the summit, whose slogan was Time to act, a call to all countries to scale up their commitments to fighting climate change.

The COP25 had as objective to raise ambition to go beyond the targets in the Paris Agreement — which set out to keep global warming to below 2 ºC — and insist on the need to move toward climate and energy scenarios that ensure that this increase stays below 1.5 ºC. This year the IPCC released two additional interim reports, one on the Oceans and the cryosphere and another one on land ecosystems that add to the 1.5 special report released in 2018. These reports confirm the need to take action now and the size of the challenge that would require to achieve net-zero CO₂ emissions by mid-21^st century under a 1.5 scenario and by 2075 under a 2-degree scenario.