EUROCLIMA+ is a regional cooperation programme between the European Union and Latin America that addresses the challenges facing the region in light of the transformations that climate change is already causing. Its objective is to reduce its impact and its effects in the 18 partner countries, promoting mitigation and adaptation, resilience and sustainable investment in the region. Currently, the programme is implemented through a consortium made up of five EU Member State cooperation agencies (FIIAPP, AECID, GIZ, EF, and AFD) plus two United Nations agencies (UN Environment and ECLAC).

The signing of the Paris Agreement in 2016, the treaty promoted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change with the goal of surpassing the Kyoto Protocol, with more ambitious targets in terms of reducing emissions and limiting temperature increases (below 2º, ideally 1.5º), requires the signatory countries to develop national plans to reduce GHG emission levels. These commitments must be reflected in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are reviewed every five years in order to further this ambition. The objective of the summit scheduled for 2020 in Glasgow, now postponed to 2021 due to the COVID19 epidemic, was to present these national reviews. Likewise, the commitments expressed in the NDCs must be accompanied by the design of climate plans and policies that guarantee they will be implemented, as well as transparency and accountability mechanisms vis-à-vis the rest of the parties to the Convention.

It is here that the EUROCLIMA+ Programme comes in, supporting actions that allow partner countries to fulfil the commitments reflected in their respective NDCs. Over these ten years, a significant number of actions and projects have been launched in order to support these processes, working at the request of the countries, preserving the horizontal relationships that characterise European cooperation, and promoting south-south cooperation to increase the impact with peer learning.

The work of the FIIAPP Foundation in this scenario has focused on four lines of action, out of the six the programme’s activity is currently structured into: Plans and Policies, Transparency and Data, Action for Climate Empowerment and Gender and Vulnerable Groups. All of them are approached with the objective of strengthening the governance of the countries by supporting them in developing their public policies, which is the hallmark of FIIAPP.

At FIIAPP, and within the framework of EUROCLIMA+, we have accompanied the process of preparing the draft Framework Law on Climate Change in Chile, which is currently being debated in congress and which we are hopeful will be passed, by supporting the preparation, participation and public consultation processes that the Chilean Ministry of the Environment launched with the aim of legitimising the law and feeding into the text contributions from the different levels of government, sectors and civil society. In addition, we have joined GIZ in supporting the development of the Long-Term Climate Strategy (LTS) that the country has just presented, linking us to the Action for Climate Empowerment component (Article 12 of the Paris Agreement), which includes the LTS.

Along the same lines, we are also supporting the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment in working with indigenous organisations. This involves providing support in consulting indigenous communities about the Regulation of the Framework Law on Climate Change, approved in January of this year. A broad process that deepens the need to incorporate citizen participation in legislative processes, and which will allow for greater appropriation by the population, creating demand for climate plans and policies for this purpose and which will result in the creation of a Indigenous Climate Platform, the second being implemented in the region.

In addition to working at the national level, we have supported and are supporting actions that include a regional, sub-regional and sub-national approach. This is the case of the work carried out in generating climate scenarios in Central America, in which we decisively contribute to the strengthening of climate services in these countries so that they can skilfully anticipate the impacts of climate change on their populations and economies. This work comes under the scope of adaptation, which promotes the use of meteorological data by developing collection, storage and presentation tools, providing training on how to use them, and developing climate models adapted to each country.

At the sub-national level, we are working on processes that have a broad impact on reducing emissions and are scalable to a national level. This is the case for the action ‘Development of a GHG Emission Reduction Plan in the Livestock Sector in Salta Province, Argentina’, which will allow one of the country’s most strategic sectors to adapt to the objectives set by Argentina in its NDCs. In addition, the plan will be able to be implemented in regions with similar characteristics.

Finally, FIIAPP is excelling in supporting the actions that the countries are beginning to design in the area of Action for Climate Empowerment (Article 6 of the UNFCCC, Article 12 of the Paris Agreement). We have started mapping the region, undertaking the thematic study ‘Action for Climate Empowerment and its Transformative Potential in Latin America’; we have begun supporting Chile, helping it to launch its first National Strategy for Climate Empowerment and Capacities, and we have also worked to support the educational component of ACE in Uruguay, in collaboration with the Ministry of Housing, Territorial Planning and Environment (MVOTMA) and the Uruguayan Agency for International Cooperation.

FIIAPP has also been actively involved in implementing the methodology that, in its new phase, the EUROCLIMA+ programme will follow in relation to the countries: the Country Dialogue, a long-term support process aimed at identifying demand; balancing progress and support in updating plans and priorities for implementing and/or updating NDCs; coordinating the implementation of EUROCLIMA+ actions; and aligning EUROCLIMA+ actions with the EU’s political dialogue with the country. This methodology has been inspired by the one developed by EUROsociAL+, an EU programme for social cohesion in Latin America led by FIIAPP, as well as by the work of the NDC Partnership, commissioned by Germany’s economic cooperation ministry. Over the past few years, we have promoted its implementation and piloting in four countries, together with the German cooperation agency GIZ, which has provided us with very valuable knowledge that is proving to be fundamental in achieving a working methodology that translates the programme’s collaborative logic and philosophy into the results required to meet the commitments made under the Paris Agreement.

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