Latin American and Caribbean climate action meets at EUROCLIMA annual meeting

After two years of pandemic and virtual events, this meeting has been a space of great relevance, as it has allowed the face-to-face exchange between EUROCLIMA members, as well as the discussion on the way forward, facing the sustainable transformation of Latin America.

The annual EUROCLIMA+ 2022 meeting is a key space where the national focal points of the program’s partner countries, the European Union, the European Union delegations and the different implementing agencies share, exchange and analyze the results obtained by the program.

The meeting was inaugurated by the Minister of Environment of Uruguay, Adrian Peña, the Ambassador of the European Union in Uruguay, Paolo Berizzi, the Head of Unit Mexico, Central America, Caribbean and Regional Operations of the European Union, Felice Zaccheo and the Executive Director of the Uruguayan Agency for International Cooperation, Mariano Berro. Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Change, made a virtual intervention during the event.

In this space, Minister Peña assured that EUROCLIMA is a flagship program. “It helps to implement national policies, its flexibility has allowed us to work according to our needs and demands, and we have been able to develop policies for sustainable urban mobility, tourism, resilient livestock…”.

For his part, Paolo Berizzi pointed out that “it was not surprising that Uruguay wanted to organize the meeting, because of the dynamism and development of initiatives adopted and congratulated the country for the recent issuance of bonds linked to emissions and conservation, a really important step”.

Lessons learned and priorities 2023-24

EUROCLIMA supports the development of tools and methodologies that enable partner governments to act consistently with their Nationally Determined Contributions and Long Term Climate Strategies. This information has allowed addressing the challenges arising from the Glasgow COP26 decisions as well as the dissemination of good practices and opportunities to meet the needs of countries. 

On this point, the Annual Meeting was the opportunity to learn about some emblematic cases of success in Uruguay, Guatemala and Costa Rica, through which it was possible to deepen the impacts and lessons learned from the actions of EUROCLIMA, a space where the consolidation of the Country Dialogue as a central methodological tool of the program was also highlighted.

Extension of the EUROCLIMA family

This year 2022 the program has welcomed the Caribbean countries in its Annual Meeting 2022, increasing the number of partner countries from 18 to 33, which will become official at the beginning of 2023.

The representatives of the Caribbean region shared experiences and visions for the future at a meeting during which the incorporation of the biodiversity approach in a global context characterized by the health, social and economic crisis was also highlighted. In this sense, the components of the Program highlighted the need to strengthen bi-regional articulation to formulate joint responses to the crisis.

The 2023 Annual Meeting will take place in Guatemala during the first semester of 2023.