FIIAPP brings Spanish public expertise to COP26 to achieve more inclusive climate policies

A delegation from the Spanish cooperation organisation specialised in public technical cooperation will attend COP26 with proposals to include the gender perspective in climate strategies and laws, to develop long-term climate action strategies, or to design regional scenarios for better adaptation policies, among others.  

“The FIIAPP comes to Glasgow with the intention of ensuring that no climate change mitigation and adaptation policy is formulated without the real and effective participation of those who will be affected by its provisions”. This is how the head of the Economic Development and Environment area, Sonsoles Mories, summarised the position of the FIIAPP before COP26.    

Counting on indigenous peoples, vital to the transition

The path of ecological transition cannot be taken without  considering its economic and social impacts on certain population groups. The change to renewable energies must take into account the needs of the peoples who inhabit the territories where these new models are to be installed, and the management of natural resources carried out there”, said Cecilia Castillo, director of climate governance of the FIAPP’s Euroclima + programme. The event Advances in the implementation of the principle of inclusiveness of the Paris Agreement in Latin America facilitated by the FIIAPP, will include representatives of indigenous peoples from Peru, Bolivia and Chile.  

We mobilise the public talent of the AEMET to create regional scenarios 

The need to transcend national borders to build regional climate scenarios is another of the proposals that the FIIAPP will take to Glasgow (COP26), based on the experience gained with the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) in Central America. Ernesto Rodríguez, an AEMET physicist mobilised with the FIIAPP insisted on the importance of international public cooperation: “Measures limited to political borders are not enough in something like the climate. Coordination and collaboration between countries, especially between their public meteorological agencies, is crucial in order to anticipate the effects of the climate and protect the most exposed people from them”. The event Viewers of climate information for adaptation to climate change, will include experts from the AEMET and the  Superior Council for Scientific Investigation (CSIC), among others.  

Long-term planning

The FIIAPP also joins the processes of Long-Term Climate Strategies (ECLP) following the appeal of the Paris Agreement: “No one doubts that the climate crisis is already an emergency that requires decisive and immediate actions; but a phenomenon of such calibre can only be seriously addressed with a full, long-term view, capable of looking 30 years ahead, in accordance with the phases of the biosphere. For young people, the climate is already a priority, and they assert this aspiration with their sights on the future, their future ”, said Sara Covaleda, from the FIIAPP, who coordinates the Long-Term Climate Strategies side event: Latin American Experiences and perspectives.   

Citizen climate action promoted from public policies

Another of the side events that the FIIAPP will take to the climate summit concerns the need to achieve citizen adherence to the climate challenge. “The problem is not only technical or political: ethics are decisive, as is questioning the sustainability of the current ways of life and consumption. And this cannot be achieved based only on a law. It is necessary to promote and facilitate citizens’ awareness to accompany public policies on climate”, said the anthropologist, engineer and social educator Yayo Herrero, a EUROCLIMA+ expert in Action for climate empowerment. This topic will be addressed at the event Empowering for Climate Action: visions and lessons, in which the ministries of the environment of Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Costa Rica and Colombia, among others, will take part.