European Conference of Regions on Climate Action

On October 20- 21, 2011, The Region of Rhône-Alpes, nrg4SD and The Climate Group invite European regions, local authorities, businesses, NGOs and representatives of civil society to attend a conference in Lyon.

The event took place in the run up to UNFCCC COP2 17 Durban, to provide a European follow up to the sub national commitments in the agreed Cancun Statement and initiate more regular European exchange.

The conference pursued three objectives:

• to pool resources in order to increase the impact of action by means of enhanced interregional cooperation.
• to initiate tangible action in respective regions by showing and sharing best practice.
• to underline the necessity for regions - as stakeholders in Climate negotiations – to speak with one voice.

The first day allowed sharing of the best practices and strategies in order to improve the performance of regions on climate change adaptation and to promote new partnerships.

On the second day political and decision makers were invited to take action on the technical and strategic processes analyzed during the workshops and propose a political declaration that will be the basis of negotiations for the next climate meetings, such as COP 17.

Day 1

Sustainable mobility workshop

This workshop focused on the role of transports in climate change by analyzing the governance aspects; local government’s strategies; supplementary on mobility; impacts of the technical offer on users’ behavior to reduce the impact on GHG (greenhouse gas).

International solidarity workshop

This session aimed to propose a global overview of decentralized co operations and the implementation of strategies on climate change actions between different regions; the specificity of new co operations to come when focusing on GHG impacts.

Energy efficiency and retrofit workshop

This workshop focused on energy efficiency in the existent housing and building sector and the climate neutral regions strategy to build up. The workshop also covered an analysis of the financial mechanisms such as ESCo, energy performance contracts, to strength the regional capacity of action on that key aspect of GHG impact.

A public event focused on the youth and citizens action on climate action

For this some eco-responsible high schools of Rhône-Alpes showed their projects on energy efficiency strategies to follow up the consumption of electricity on high schools, to sensitize, and to act by multidimensional projects combining technical, pedagogical and artistic aspects.

Some citizen’s participation initiatives on climate action were also presented at the end of Day 1.

Several European and overseas VIPs specialized on climate change issues also joined this event.

Day 2

• In the morning a final drafting session on the political Declaration took place. This second part of the event aimed to consolidate in one voice the efforts, results, expectations, and propositions of the local governments involved in this process.

This declaration will be the fruit of conclusions from the workshops as well as the achievement of an agenda of preparatory meetings before the conference (that includes both, reference to the aforementioned commitment – with timing for implementation - and political regional claims).

• In the afternoon a plenary session, with a press conference took place to close the event.