The Community of Practical Learning for ACE and the LTCS Exchange Space come together in a joint session to discuss the relevance of incorporating Climate Empowerment Action into Long Term Climate Strategies.
14 December - The EUROCLIMA+ programme held a new virtual exchange session at the intersection of two of its most active exchange spaces: the Community of Practical Learning on Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE), a community of practice driven by UNESCO-Santiago and FIIAPP in the framework of the EUROCLIMA+ programme, and the Space for Exchange on Long-Term Climate Strategies (LTCS), jointly facilitated by FIIAPP, GIZ, ECLAC and UN Environment in the context of the initiative Regional Collaboration on transparency and completion of Nationally Determined Contributions and capacity-building for Long-Term Climate Strategies.
Boosting climate ambition and the commitments acquired in the NDCs and LTCSs in the Latin American region requires increasing multiple capacities that can be improved through the strengthening of competences, understood as resources - knowledge, skills and attitudes - that allow for efficient action. Capacities can be understood as referring to individuals, institutions or human groups, and reflect the possibilities or conditions for acting with co-responsibility, assuming tasks and functions.
Action for Climate Empowerment is oriented towards the generation of capacities to act, influence, transform and confront climate change, based on education, training, awareness raising, public participation, access to information and cooperation. ACE aims to be an instrument that articulates public policies in its 6 elements, becoming a key component that drives the commitments made by countries in Latin America to meet their goals in adaptation and mitigation measures on Climate Change. On the other hand, the Paris Agreement, specifically in paragraph 19 of Article 4, invites the parties to work on Long-Term Climate Strategies (LTCS), with the aim of establishing a roadmap in which to frame subsequent Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
A total of 46 countries have submitted their LTCSs to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In the context of Latin America, Mexico and Costa Rica were the first countries to submit their LTCSs to the UNFCCC and this year Guatemala, Chile and Colombia have taken the step. However, many other countries are at different stages of planning and developing their respective LTCSs, along with updating their NDCs. In this regard, the implementation of LTCSs, still incipient in the region, represents a great opportunity to lay the foundations for transformative development in the countries and to identify measures that increase the ambition of the current commitments, also contributing to the continuous updating of the NDCs (GIZ, 2019).
The debate on the inclusion of ACE in the framework of the LTCSs has gained relevance in recent times, although until recently this component has not been explicitly considered. While some LTCSs highlight the importance of citizen participation and the role of non-state actors in the implementation of climate action, or the needs to build or strengthen certain capacities, these are either included as integrated elements in the measures presented, as a descriptive assessment of the need to include society in the transition to climate neutrality, or rather are reflected in the citizen participation mechanisms established for the updating of the country's commitments. In the case of Latin America, it is important to highlight that there are already indications of the intention to link the ACE Strategies with the LTCSs. In the case of Chile, the ACE Strategy is considered as a means of implementing the LTCS and Colombia, for its part, considers education, training, awareness raising and capacity building as a means of empowering social actors and implementation to sustain and promote climate resilience. In Uruguay, the public consultation version of the LTCS indicates that this Strategy has been a fundamental input for the Strategy for Climate Empowerment (ENACE), currently underway, and that both strategies, ENACE and LTCS, will continue to feed into each other in the future.
About the session
The exchange session was aimed at sharing lessons learned in the development of the LTCSs and, especially, to discuss the role of ACE in public policies. ACE thus becomes a cross-cutting component that can contribute to increasing ambition in Long Term Climate Strategies, and to identifying climate challenges in the Latin American region.
During the session we had the opportunity to learn about the experiences of Uruguay and Chile in the development of their LTCSs, articulated with the National Action Strategies for Climate Empowerment (ENACE), both instruments that contribute to the implementation of the NDCs of the countries in the region.
49 people from the 18 countries that make up the EUROCLIMA+ programme participated in this joint and shared session, where, in addition to learning about the cases of Chile and Uruguay, collaborative work was carried out with the aim of obtaining a decalogue of recommendations on the integration of the ACE component in the LTCSs.
About EUROCLIMA+
EUROCLIMA+ is a programme funded by the European Union and co-financed by the German federal government through the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), as well as by the governments of France and Spain through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation.
The Programme's mission is to reduce the impact of climate change and its effects in 18 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, promoting mitigation, adaptation, resilience and climate investment. It is implemented according to the "Spirit of Team Europe" under the synergistic work of seven agencies: the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), the French Development Agency (AFD), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Expertise France (EF), the International and Ibero-America Foundation for Administration and Public Policy (FIIAPP), the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) GmbH, and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
Contact:
Daniel Fernández This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.