Prince William to follow in father’s footsteps by attending COP climate summit next year

The 2025 conference will take place in Brazil and will follow the Prince’s fifth Earthshot award ceremony

The Prince of Wales will attend the Cop30 climate summit in Brazil next year as he follows in his father’s footsteps.
Prince William is “looking forward to playing a role” at the conference, which is expected to be “hugely consequential”, a royal source said.
It is not yet known whether the King will travel to South America for the climate talks. He would only go at the formal request of the Government and any decision would also be subject to the advice of his medical team nearer the time.
But as a seasoned Cop speaker and lifelong environmental campaigner, it is thought he will be keen to attend. His “enthusiasm and support for Cop as a concept” is well known, a Buckingham Palace source said.
For Prince William, though, it will be something of a first. Although he and his wife, then the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, attended several events during the first days of the Cop26 conference in Glasgow in 2021, which coincided with the first Earthshot award ceremony in London, he has not travelled to other summits.
Next year’s conference, which takes place in the Amazonian city of Belem in November, will follow the Prince’s fifth annual Earthshot ceremony, which is widely expected to take place in South America.
The confirmation that he will attend the summit comes after he spoke for the first time about the “brutal” year he has endured following both his wife and his father’s cancer diagnoses, which he admitted had been “the hardest year in my life”.
As the Prince arrived home from Cape Town, where he attended multiple events surrounding this year’s awards, a royal source said: “Throughout his trip, the Prince spoke about the importance of not losing sight of what needs to be done between now and 2030 – the Earthshot decade.
“His commitment to restoring the future of the planet is unwavering and the Prince is determined to do all he can to use his platform to spread urgent optimism.
“Next year, the Climate Cop will take place in Brazil and it’s set to be hugely consequential.
“The Prince of Wales is looking forward to playing a role there.”
As the Prince prepares one day to be monarch, he is increasingly positioning himself as a global statesman, rubbing shoulders with political leaders and releasing punchy statements about international affairs.
Last week in Cape Town, he sat down with Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, and David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, for what was billed as the “highest level engagement” that would help cement a “really important” bilateral relationship.
A Kensington Palace spokesperson said ahead of the meeting: “It’s another example of the evolution of William as a global statesman, as we’ve seen, whether it be representing his father in Kuwait last year, or indeed when he was sat with 15 other world leaders at D-Day earlier this year.”
The Prince has held meetings with leaders in each of the three countries that have so far hosted the Earthshot awards, including Joe Biden in Boston in 2022. 
Such meetings have been described as the “golden thread” of each event and the heir to the throne has made no secret of his desire to ensure his environmental message is a fully global one.
The King first addressed the Cop summit in Copenhagen in 2009, when he warned global leaders that the “eyes of the world” were upon them. He went on to attend the 2015 meeting in Paris, when he called for a “vast military-style campaign” to fight climate breakdown, urging world leaders to commit “trillions, not billions, of dollars”
In Glasgow, he warned that a “war-like footing” was needed to tackle the climate crisis, while in a video address to the 2021 conference, Elizabeth II hailed her eldest son’s work on the environment.
The King was forced to abandon plans in 2022 to attend and deliver a speech at the Cop27 climate change summit on the advice of Liz Truss. Instead, he held his own reception for world leaders at Buckingham Palace to signal his support.
Last year, the King was the only head of state from outside the Gulf to make a keynote speech at the summit in the United Arab Emirates, an honour described by one palace source as “a real landmark, such is his leadership in the sphere”.
He told world leaders that repeated warning signs about climate change were being ignored to the detriment of “lives and livelihoods” and that “the hope of the world” rested on the decisions they must take.