« Lima had the honor to host from December 1st through 14th; the 20th Conference of the Parties (COP 20) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (<link www.unfccc.int - external-link "Öffnet externen Link im aktuellen Fenster">UNFCCC</link>). Lima is the third Latin American city to host the meeting so far. A really big challenge for a country that despite the good macroeconomic results in the last ten years, still need to do a lot in terms of poverty, inequality and environmental issues - Peru is one of the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Being in Lima and participate in such an importance conference was a really fruitful experience and a good opportunity to share with international and local actors our different perspectives of climate change, mitigation, adaptation, transfer technology and other approaches to address the consequences of climate change.
I would like to start with the opinions I gathered about the outcomes of the conference, I heard phrases from both sides, as “low-ambition consensus”... “missed opportunity” …. “there is much to be done in Paris”, but also … “is a key stepping towards a new climate regime” …. “it is great achievement to have an agreement signed for the 195 countries”. Despite the importance to define the scheme, approach and priority topics in the new climate regime, the COP20 left the main topics to be discussed into the next months. We will see in the future if it was the best strategy; we are running with less time to take actions that reduce significantly the quantity of greenhouse gases (GEI) we generated.
Lima hosted not only the official COP20, it had a lot of public side events and a nice initiative as Voices for Climate, an space where different actors show us the importance of climate change, their initiatives as simple actions to reduce our carbon footprint, the different technologies we can use to reduce our impact on the environment and also interesting seminars and workshops with international and local speakers. Lot of young volunteers and also young attendees (schoolchildren) was the nice view in this event, in 12 days received more than 80,000 visitors, but with a better coverage we could have even more visitors.
In general, the COP20 was well organized despite the traffic jam, the overcrowded and noisy city Lima is becoming, the different countries’ representatives felt really conformable and despite the results was not the expected we still trying to do our part to upgrade this problem in the national and international agenda and make the people understand the big challenge we have with climate change issues, the effects will have if we do not take actions promptly, and the different opportunities we have to reduce our negative environmental impacts in the world.
I hope more people in Lima and Peru know a little bit about climate and how they could change their patterns of living to make this world sustainable for all of us. »
Paul Leon
Project Manager myclimate Latin America
(based in Lima)