Event reports
The night before the Forum, a welcome reception was held, attended by representatives of the cities of Sincelejo, Floridablanca, Pasto, Bucaramanga, Medellin, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Lima, Merida and Santiago, among others. During this meeting, both panelists and representatives had the opportunity to exchange previous information and share their expectations concerning the forum.
On the following day, the opening remarks were given by Mariana Rojas, Director of Climate Change of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development; Luis Alfonso Rodríguez, Director of the DAGMA Administrative Department of Environmental Management of the Mayor of Cali; Christian Hübner, Director of EKLA KAS, Juliana Lopes, Director of CDP Cities Latinamerica and Roberto Gómez, Sub-Director of Local Development and Climate Change at Fundación Natura.
The keynote presentation was given by Jordan Harris, National Director of Adapt Chile, who shared the methodology and results of the publication "Climate Governance and Local Climate Change Responses: Case Study Comparison for Cities of the Pacific Alliance."
The first panel, "International Experiences for Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change in Cities of the Pacific Alliance", talked about the actions taken by different cities. In the case of the municipality of Medellín, Óscar Hoyos, Secretary of Environment, highlighted the development of education programs and good environmental practices plus the increase of preferential lanes for public transportation and investment in electronic transport, He mentioned these aspects in a context of an increasing vehicle fleet and the presence of contaminants by motorcycles and trucks.
In the case of Merida, he emphazised the work in planning in a city that doubled its population in the last 10 years. Sayda Rodríguez, Director of Sustainable Development of the municipality of Mérida, informed us about the municipality's efforts concerning different areas: mobility, sustainability, innovation, among others; in addition to the need of initiating this work of change in the behavior patterns of the workers of the municipality's office through online courses. Ecotourism is an important activity within this process of transition towards a sustainable city.
Coming from Lima, Pamela Peña, Sustainability Manager of the Municipality of San Isidro, reported how the district, despite being small, receive a daily influx of 800 000 people, which creates problems such as the intense traffic that causes various contaminations . As a result of their carbon footprint measurement, they realized that energy consumption generates the highest greenhouse gas emissions. Another challenge that is to be faced is Solid Waste Management: of the 120 tn daily generated, only 4 tn are recycled. It was also mentioned that the use of public space plays a crucial role for a better quality of life for neighbors and visitors.
José Tomás Rosdríguez, deputy director of Environment of the Municipality of Santiago de Chile, highlighted that the main problems are: shortages of drinking water, increasing heatwaves in recent years and air pollution. As a consequence, it was made an effort towards a NAMA Green Zone, a technological change by using private and public vehicles, expansion of recycling, sustainable education programs and the implementation of community gardens.
All panelists agreed on the importance of following international protocols and agreements such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Nationally Determined Conditions (NDCs), but they also emphasized that it is time-consuming and highly dependent on the political will of the respective authorities.
In the second panel, "The role of every individual," a representative from each sector was involved: Mariana Alegre from the organized civil society, Carlos Arturo Martínez from the private sector and Luis Alfonso Rodríguez from the public sector.
Mariana Alegre of Lima Cómo Vamos emphasized that sustainability is an issue of shared responsibility and that the taxpayer acts differently than the consumer even though there are situations where one person owns both characteristics. According to surveys, 70% of the respondents said that climate change affects their lives, what means that people understand do that climate change affects health, generates pollution and extreme climates. Besides, it is necessary to approach citizens even if it is a difficult process to generate environmental education, to share experiences, to develop programs within the community.
Carlos Arturo Martínez commented that the environmental issue in Colombia has begun to evolve: in the beginning, it was just an issue raised by "hippies”, but now a change of paradigm has taken place. Nowadays, the environmental issue plays a crucial rule in terms of competitiveness among companies. Currently sustainability is important for identifying risks and opportunities.
Furthermore, Luis Alfonso Rodríguez stated the importance of regulations concerning climate change as well as the need to permeate the citizen’s wil, international cooperation and budget. Cali possesses a system of monitoring the water quality and a thermal map as well as is aware of its urban heat islands. However, new challenges arise every day, for example, the definition of a limit for the growth of the city. Finally, environmental education has become a major challenge.
Hence, it can be seen that cities have focused their efforts on mitigation actions by applying cross-sectional strategies and involving different actors. Nevertheless, the integration of adaption measures has been neglected so far.
After the 2nd Panel, the public Conference was finished. Immediately afterwards, after a brief refreshment, the workshop organized by CDP Cities Latinoamérica and Fundación Natura began, which was addressed to the city’s representatives. The presentation of the initiative CDP Cities Latin America and the development of a case study served as a starting point to generate an exchange of ideas and to debate on actions that had to be taken in respect of local climate policies. Likewise, the presentation of the SASA Cities Footprint initiative was presented by Miguel Rodríguez.
At the end of the day, the challenges were clear: Transportation, energy consumption and solid waste management are necessary. For this, a cross-sectoral coordination and a participative assessment, that involves the cities and considers urban growth, will be essential.
