European Commission and UNEP strengthen regional cooperation on Climate Change in Latin America on the road to COP Lima (Dec. 2014).

Brussels, 3 June 2014 – Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Achim Steiner and EU Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs signed a new contribution agreement today on climate change in Latin America under the EUROCLIMA programme.

The European Commission and UNEP are joining forces under EUROCLIMA in order to support the integration of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and measures into Latin American public development policies and plans at the national, sub-regional and regional levels. This will include support to:

·Facilitating high level policy dialogue on climate change policies, supported by the UNEP-hosted Secretariat to the Forum of Ministers of Environment of Latin American and Caribbean;

·Promoting national climate change debate and legislation within national parliaments and Parlatino; and

·Raising public awareness within the civil society about climate change, in particular in the context of the preparation of the COP20 and COP21.

This agreement supports regional cooperation on environment and climate change, thereby contributing to strengthened international environmental governance in line with the Rio+20 outcomes and the newly created United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA), which will meet for the first time on 23-27 June 2014 in Nairobi, Kenya.

The agreement also contributes to leverage the impact of the on-going cooperation between the European Commission and UNEP at global level, adding a regional dimension to the long-standing global thematic cooperation.

Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner said,

“UNEP is proud to join hands with the European Commission and governments in Latin America and the Caribbean - as well as the wider development community - to help address the serious challenges posed by climate change across the LAC region.

"Activities under the agreement will be aligned with priorities of governments as identified by the Forum of Latin American and Caribbean Ministers of Environment".

"I trust EuroClima will be a pioneering step forward towards strengthening regional cooperation, which will benefit from UNEP's strengthened mandate to support environmental cooperation at the regional level worldwide," he added.

EUROCLIMA is a regional cooperation programme between the European Union and Latin America, focused on climate change. UNEP, through its Regional Office, will join forces together with other partners - Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC). The overall objective of the programme is to contribute topoverty eradication of the Latin American population by reducing their environmental and social vulnerability to climate change and reinforcing their resilience of the Latin American region to climate change and promote opportunities for green growth.

The UNEP-led activities will be aligned with priorities of the governments of the region, as identified by the Forum of Latin American and Caribbean of Ministers of Environment and other venues, and are consistent with the agenda of negotiations under the UNFCCC. They will also seek to further strengthen synergies with UNEP cooperation and capacity building activities in the region and complement global and regional networks and initiatives, such as the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) the Ibero-American Network of Climate Change Offices (RIOCC), the UNEP Regional Gateway for Technology Transfer and Climate Change Action in Latin America and the Caribbean (REGATTA), and others.

UNEP, through its Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, is providing Secretariat to the Forum of Latin American and Caribbean Ministers of Environment. The Forum – which last met in Los Cabos, Mexico in March 2014 - is aimed at facilitating regional policy dialogue and cooperation and has been acknowledged in the Los Cabos Declaration (March 2014) as one of the most relevant spaces for political and policy dialogue to establish and define regional priorities.

The event can be viewed on http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/videoByDate.cfm?sitelang=en(video) and

http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/videoByDate.cfm?sitelang=en (pictures).

Extracts will also be available on European Commission website: http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/piebalgs/index_en.htm

For more information on UNEP work in Latin America and the Caribbean: http://www.pnuma.org

For more information on the Forum of Minsiters of Environment of Latin American and Caribbean, Los Cabos-Mexico, March 2014: http://www.pnuma.org/forodeministros/19-mexico/documentos.htm

For more information on EUROCLIMA programme: http://www.euroclima.org/es/

Media contacts:  Alexa Froger, UNEP Brussels Office: alexa.froger@unep.org and +32 2 213 30 59