The Community of Practice on Action for Climate Empowerment is holding its third session dedicated to citizen participation and the role of civil society in driving strategies and actions for climate empowerment.
Madrid, June 29th - A new working session has been held in the framework of the Community of Practical Learning on ACE, an initiative of the EUROCLIMA+ programme that is being developed by FIIAPP in partnership with OREALC/UNESCO Santiago. The meeting was a continuation of the previous session, dedicated to analysing the Participation dimension, with a focus on civil society. On this occasion, it focused on methodologies, strategies and tools to encourage and maintain citizen participation.
The session held on 18 May sought to answer the question: how can public administrations encourage citizen participation? The objective was to promote their protagonism, to make them participants in the programmes and, in short, to incorporate civil society into public policies as relevant actors of change, highlighting their knowledge and practices. Along this line, work was carried out under the framework of the Escazú agreement, access to information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters. It also reflected on how citizen mobilisation is key to new consensuses that allow for the acceleration of climate action, i.e. to face climate and environmental challenges efficiently, quickly and with a human rights perspective.
In this second part, the role of civil society in the generation of responses, the articulation of networks, the creation of knowledge and innovative practices with a tendency to be received by public administrations and reflected in climate policies was analysed. The session had two central themes: participatory processes in the development of national strategies on Climate Change in Spain and climate assemblies as methodological tools to promote climate empowerment in Europe.
CAP ACE had the opportunity to have two main presentations:
- Enrique Segovia, Director of WWF; who spoke in depth about the Participatory Process for the National Strategy for Sustainable Development in the framework of the 2030 Agenda and SDGs.
- Yago Bermejo Abati, coordinator of Global Assambley and expert in Deliberative Democratic Participation.
During the day, people participating in CAP ACE were able to reflect on the role of civil society in ACE strategies and actions, as well as the responsibility of public policy to link the knowledge and experience of organised civil society to their actions; identify and learn about experiences, initiatives and alliances between government and civil society in the challenges of ACE, through strategies for citizen participation and the generation of spaces for networking and consensus building; to value methodologies, tools, resources and experiences generated between civil society and public bodies to implement ACE policies; to discuss which capacities should be developed by the technical teams of public administrations in order to identify and incorporate them into public policy, while permanently promoting participation; and to develop collaborative and interactive work aimed at identifying potential for replicability in the implementation of ACE policies and increasing the ambition of the NDCs.
At the conclusion of the day, emphasis was placed on the relevance of strengthening institutional mechanisms that ensure a continuous dialogue with citizens in order to advance transparency and open government policies on climate issues. The Escazú Agreement plays a leading role in the reflections expressed in this session, becoming a referential framework of principles that support the climate empowerment of society. The appropriation and involvement of citizens on Climate Change focused part of the questions on the dialogue and especially, understanding what connections and articulations at the institutional level can be strengthened.
The great challenge in the coming years is the design of public policies on Climate Change with citizen participation and innovation as a cross-cutting element in national strategies that promote spaces for dialogue, consultative and binding on the issues proposed to promote a 2050 decarbonisation horizon.
About EUROCLIMA+
EUROCLIMA+ is a programme funded by the European Union and co-financed by the German federal government through the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), as well as by the governments of France and Spain, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation. Its objective is to reduce the impact of climate change and its effects in 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries by promoting climate change mitigation and adaptation, resilience and investment. The Programme is implemented under the synergistic work of seven agencies: the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), the French Development Agency (AFD), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Expertise France (EF), the International and Ibero-America Foundation for Administration and Public Policy (FIIAPP), the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), and the UN Environment Programme.
Contact
Daniel Fernández · This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.