Chile to replace Brazil as 2019 UN climate summit host

KATOWICE, Poland - Chile will take the place of Brazil in hosting next year's UN climate summit, delegates at crunch talks in Poland were informed on Friday.

Brazil last month pulled out as host of the COP25 summit, set for late 2019, claiming that holding the negotiations would be too expensive.

Its president-elect Jair Bolsonaro said during campaigning he was considering pulling the country from the landmark 2015 Paris accord and his victory has alarmed environmentalists at home and abroad.

Chile's environment minister Carolina Schmidt told negotiators at the COP24 in the Polish mining city of Katowice that her country would step in and hold the two-week summit.

Costa Rica will host the annual "pre-COP" meeting of ministers a few months before the main event.

Representatives from nearly 200 nations are gathered in Poland to hash out a comprehensive plan that will make good on the promises made in the Paris agreement that aim to limit global temperature rises and avoid the worst effects of runaway climate change. — Agence France-Presse