President Piñera meets the British Prime Minister: "We’ve decided to join forces to change the course of history and achieve significant commitments from countries in order to avoid hurtling towards an environmental holocaust"
The meeting took place just weeks before President Piñera is due to hand over the presidency of the COP environmental protection conference to Mr. Johnson. During their meeting, the two leaders discussed the urgency of combating climate change. They also spoke about their experience of addressing the pandemic and the vaccination programs in Chile and the United Kingdom.
The President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, met with the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, this Friday.
During the meeting, the President and the Prime Minister agreed on the importance of jointly addressing urgent challenges, such as containing the COVID-19 pandemic and combating climate change.
President Piñera highlighted their talks about a global treaty on pandemic preparedness and response, covering cooperation and the exchange of experiences, solidarity and collaboration between countries, the flow of goods and services, and access to diagnostics, treatments and vaccines. Mr. Johnson congratulated Chile on its vaccination program.
"We met with the Health Minister and the whole team of experts and technicians who are leading the campaign to contain the pandemic in England, in order to share experiences and improve our approach," said the President.
President Piñera emphasized that Chile and the United Kingdom have an important role in reducing climate change, with Chile holding the presidency for COP-25 and the United Kingdom taking on this role for COP-26, which is scheduled to take place in Glasgow in November.
The President emphasized that "Prime Minister Boris Johnson and I have decided to join forces to make an effort to change the course of history in Glasgow and achieve significant and lasting commitments from countries in order to avoid hurtling towards an environmental holocaust, thereby ensuring that we, our children and grandchildren will be able to live safely, and hopefully happily, on planet Earth."
The President invited Prime Minister Johnson to visit Chile.
A Chile-UK Science Alliance was announced at the meeting, which will focus on working together to improve the management of pandemics and climate change, and develop excellent evidence-based policies.
This alliance will boost coordination between Chile and the United Kingdom when responding to pandemics in areas such as vaccines and genome sequencing.
The United Kingdom will also help Chile to establish a Climate Change Observatory, which will make it possible to gather evidence to promote policies and specific actions to combat climate change.
The agreement will strengthen the UK's support for Chile’s scientific development.
The relationship between the two nations has been characterized by openness and fluidity in the political, economic, social, commercial, scientific, educational, cultural and defense fields. Chile and the United Kingdom already have agreements on defense, security and police matters, on scientific exchange between academics and researchers and on cultural promotion and Antarctic collaboration.