During the climate talks at the 22nd Session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22) held in Marrakech from 7 to 18 November 2016, thousands of local and regional leaders from across the globe have called on governments at all levels to live up to and go beyond the commitments made in Paris last year, and to put in place the necessary tools to take decisive climate action.
Speaking at the Climate Summit for Local and Regional Leaders on 14 November which gathered some 1,500 local and regional leaders, CoR ENVE President Francesco Pigliaru, President of the Sardinia region (PES/Italy), recalled that cities and regions, who are responsible for more than 70% of climate change reduction measures and for up to 90% of climate change adaptation measures, are key partners in reaching the ambitious climate change target agreed in Paris.
"We expect the climate talks to result in a global climate governance that formalises a permanent dialogue between cities and regions, national governments and UN bodies", the CoR rapporteur on Delivering the global climate agreement – a territorial approach to COP22 in Marrakech underlined. "The global community needs to show how binding targets will be monitored while closely tracking progress through common assessment mechanisms. Moreover, we urgently need to integrate cities and regions’ cuts in greenhouse gas emissions within National Determined Contributions", he emphasised.
PES Group members also contributed to a series of COP 22 side events aimed at sharing successful actions taken at regional and local level against climate change and promoting the Covenant of Mayors, the EU's largest energy and climate initiative for cities and regions, in Morocco and beyond.
Moreover, the Commission for Sustainable Territorial Development of the Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (ARLEM) which gathered alongside the COP 22 on 15 November, adopted Francesco Pigliaru's report on Cross-border Cooperation in the Mediterranean region. "I firmly believe that cross-border cooperation has the potential to establish genuine partnerships among territories on an equal footing, thereby breaking the traditional dichotomy of north-south/donor-recipient and allowing for result-driven, innovative action and concrete results ", he said. His main recommendations are to promote the leadership role of local and regional authorities in cross-border cooperation, to strengthen their participation in the programming process and to support efficient and effective decentralization processes.
