On Tuesday, December 5th, the first day of the Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM) for Climate & Energy South Asia Regional Workshop was held in Kathmandu, Nepal – an event to exchange and connect major cities on environmental and climate issues, with Stefano Boeri Architetti participating with Lucrezia De Marco, head of the Communication Department.
The workshop aims to support the signatory cities of the Global Covenant of Mayors, in ‘identifying strategies and priorities to guide the process of ecological transition.
The GCoM network is the largest alliance of cities and has 12,800 local government signatories, spread across 6 continents and 140 countries, with a total of 1 billion citizens. So, one in 8 people in the world is involved in the GCoM network. Specifically, the Dec. 5-7 workshop in Nepal is coordinated by GCoM South Asia and involves 48 cities across India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, with a focus on the region’s high vulnerability to climate change and the risks it faces.
While cities are largely responsible for CO2 emissions, with direct implications for climate change, they are also the first victims-just think of the extreme weather events by which they are, increasingly, affected. Making cities resilient to climate change and its effects – rising sea levels, rising temperatures, increasing risk of flooding, coastal erosion – through adaptation and mitigation strategies, will go a long way toward helping cities contribute to their country’s national perspective toward carbon neutrality and climate resilience. “Intervening at the local scale to make a global impact” is the goal of the workshop, which involves mayors, municipalities, businesses, practitioners and researchers to activate new forms of creative planning consistent with EU climate funding priorities and capable of making cities climate-resilient.
In addition, from the Paris agreements to today, it is also crucial to think in terms of climate finance and international policies, to ensure the possibility of access to economic funds for cities, especially those of medium or small size usually “excluded” from the international financing circuit, which need to attract capital in order to be able to build a path of ecological and energy transition effectively.
The first day is dedicated to presentations of selected cities that have initiated mitigation and adaptation processes with respect to contemporary challenges generated by climate change.
The workshop opened in the presence of Deputy Prime Minister of Nepal Narayan Kaji Shrestha, with introductions by Tomasz Gawlik, International Climate Finance, European Commission, Pier Roberto Remitti, GCoM Global Secretariat, and Veronique Lorenzo, Ambassador of the European Union Delegation to Nepal.
For more information: https://www.globalcovenantofmayors.org/