This year’s Petersberg Climate Dialogue (PCD), held from 25-26 March 2025 in Berlin, Germany focuses on the preparations for the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) taking place in Belém, often called the gateway to the Amazon, in Brazil.
2025 is a year of climate anniversaries. It marks ten years of the Paris Agreement, 20 years of the Kyoto Agreement, 30 years of climate conferences in general. Incidentally, the first climate conference itself also took place in Berlin: in 1995 under then Environment Minister Angela Merkel.
The Petersberg Climate Dialogue serves as an annual platform for informal, high-level political discussions that focus on advancing international climate negotiations, strengthening climate diplomacy and promoting tangible climate action.
From the most remote small island states to the economically powerful G20 states, representatives from around 40 countries are coming together in Berlin for the next two days upon the invitation of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and the designated COP30 President, Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago from Brazil.
National Climate Plans
Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Simon Stiell emphasised the importance of countries submitting strong Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in a major speech past month when visting COP30 host country Brazil, outlining UNFCCC’s top policy priorities for this year. NDCs are efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
As the European Union prepares its next climate plan for submission ahead of COP30, UN Climate Chief Simon Stiell urged countries to increase their ambition to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
“National climate plans – Nationally Determined Contributions in our climate lingo – are crucial.
Already we’ve seen several major economies – including Brazil and the UK among others – send clear signals they are stepping up climate action by submitting bold new climate action plans, because it’s entirely in the interests of their economies and their citizens,” Stiell said. “Because these national plans are among the most important policy documents governments will produce this century, their quality should be the paramount consideration.”
Climate Conference 2025 with symbolic power
Every year at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, the new President of the next UN climate change conference makes their first major appearance on an international stage. Brazilian diplomat André Corrêa do Lago from Brazil is set to lead the designated COP30 presidency under particularly symbolic power.
Held in Belém in the Amazon, Brazil is hosting the conference in a hotspot of the climate crisis. The conference in Brazil also has significance for another reason. The fundamental first meeting at which it was decided that the world would hold climate conferences in the future also took place in Brazil at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Background information
The inaugural Petersberg Climate Dialogue, convened by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to enhance dialogue between leaders and environmental ministers after the challenging negotiations at the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15), took place from April 2-4, 2010. It was held at Hotel Petersberg, situated on the hill known as “Petersberg” near Bonn, Germany—home to UNFCCC’s headquarters. In subsequent years, the conference has been hosted in Berlin. The aim is to find common solutions to the most pressing global challenges in the field of climate change and to strengthen political consensus on the implementation of ambitious climate goals.