Ministers and delegations are furiously negotiating the draft agreement text. The facilitators for the four thematic groups provided an update on progress in yesterday’s plenary, and while some groups had made more progress than others, each group made positive comments about initial progress and promised a more thorough update tomorrow (for more on the negotiation process, see yesterday’s post).
Things outside the bilateral and informal consultation rooms are deceptively quiet, with no news outside the normal flurry of side events. So while I wait for an update at the next plenary, I thought I would focus today’s post on an issue that has gotten a lot of attention at this year’s COP: the important role of cities in combating climate change.
A Climate Summit for Local Leaders was held on the margins of COP21 at the Paris City Hall on Friday, 4 December. Cities and sub-national government also featured in a number of official side events. The Premier of Québec spoke at Action Day (see my Day 4 Post), profiling the carbon market that Québec has established in cooperation with California. With the proceeds of this market, Québec will contribute $252 million to the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), making it the first sub-national contributor to this global fund.
 |
| Premier of Québec Philippe Couillard discussing Québec's carbon market at the COP21 Action Day. |
C40 cities, a network of megacities committed to addressing climate change, also partnered with Yale University to organize a side event on “Energizing Climate Action through Broader Engagement and City-Scale Climate Finance.” To profile the progress made by cities around the world, C40 also announced their 2015 Cities Awards at COP21. I was particularly pleased to see that Washington, D.C. had won the green energy award for its Wind Power Purchase Agreement.
Cities are estimated to be responsible for 75% of global CO2 emissions, making it even more significant that such a great amount of progress, interest, and determination has been shown by global city leaders. Looking beyond COP21, this is definitely an area of climate change work that I will be closely following!
For more on cities and climate change, see:
- UNEP, “Cities as Climate Change”: http://www.unep.org/resourceefficiency/Policy/ResourceEfficientCities/FocusAreas/CitiesandClimateChange/tabid/101665/Default.aspx
- The Compact of Mayors: http://www.compactofmayors.org/
- Climate Summit for Local Leaders website: http://climatesummitlocalleaders.paris/
- C40 Cities website: http://www.c40.org/
- Winners of the City Climate Leadership Awards 2015: http://www.c40.org/awards/3/profiles
- Newly released UN Report on The State of City Climate Finance 2015: http://www.citiesclimatefinance.org/2015/12/the-state-of-city-climate-finance-2015-2/
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.