19/03/2018
The EUROCLIMA+ Programme is organising a workshop to promote environmental certification in educational centres in various Latin American countries
One of the educational centres in Uruguay
Montevideo has hosted the regional workshop entitled Progress in Environmental Education on Climate Change. An activity promoted by the EUROCLIMA+ Programme, whose aim is to provide a space for training and exchange on the subject between different Latin American countries.
The European Union is financing this programme to develop climate change mitigation and adaptation policies in the region. This particular activity seeks to promote the implementation of environmental certification programmes in educational centres, and it is being undertaken within the Climate Governance component managed by FIIAPP.
The workshop was organised by the Uruguayan Ministry of Housing, Land Planning and the Environment (MVOTMA) and the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC). It was attended by 32 participants from 18 institutions from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. The aim of the workshop was to share experience on the importance of education in promoting sustainable development and local responses to climate change.
During the opening ceremony, the national director for the environment, Alejandro Nario, stressed the importance of an inter-institutional approach and he acknowledged that “society must achieve a change in the way things are done, which will be impossible without a cultural change”. This is why MVOTMA is implementing a National Policy for Environmental Education, which promotes education as a way to be able to choose ways of life compatible with environmental conservation.
For her part, the first counsellor of the European Union Delegation in Uruguay, Andrea Nicolaj, underlined the EU’s commitment to the fight against climate change, for which regional cooperation with Latin America is the key to facing these challenges: “because it is not possible to fight it unilaterally, we need action at the regional and global level“. And she acknowledged the EUROCLIMA+ Programme’s importance in this respect.
EUROCLIMA+ is the third phase in the European programme on climate change in Latin America. The programme’s goal is to facilitate dialogue on regional policy and provide technical and financial support to develop and implement climate change adaptation measures and mitigation policies in the Latin American region.
The programme is present in 18 Latin American countries and works in accordance with the United Nations framework Convention on climate change and according to the needs of each country.
It is scheduled to last three years and the European Commission is trusting in five European institutions to manage the project’s different components: FIIAPP, AECID, GIZ, Expertise France and l’ Agence Française de Développement.
