News

9 December 2014

ICLEI-organised COP20 side event sees local leaders commit to climate action

Lima (Peru) was host to a crucial ICLEI-organised climate change meeting yesterday, held as a side event of the annual United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conferences (UNFCCC COP20/CMP10). At the meeting, world mayors and international experts showed their engagement in the new climate regime to be adopted in 2015 at COP21 in Paris (France). The key outcome of the Lima Dialogues – High level event, the “Lima Communiqué”, underlines the scientific basis for climate action, and cements the commitment of local governments to step up collaborative climate action and scale down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The Communiqué will feed into the ongoing UNFCCC negotiations, where over 190 countries are conferring on the draft text of new international climate change agreement.

“Cities are made up of its citizens, and if the changes are not coming from new generations, from the community, we are walking through unknown paths into our planet’s uncertainty. We cannot allow that,” said Susana Villarán, Mayor of Lima. “The legacy of this COP20 in Lima should be for a greater, more robust engagement of local governments beginning with us, starting today in Lima, towards Paris and beyond.”

The meeting highlighted the Compact of Mayors - an ambitious agreement among city leaders to reduce city-level emissions and enhance resilience to climate change - as one of the key accords for local governments to engage in. The side event also saw the World Resources Institute (WRI), C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) and ICLEI unveil the first unified global standard for cities to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions. The Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) is the first harmonised standard to track emissions from cities, empowering cities and local governments to set credible emission reduction targets and take action.

For more information, download the press release in English or Spanish.