Dialogues

Women are the engine of the rural world. They lead sustainable projects, fix population, preserve traditions and promote innovation. Marta Corella, director of bioeconomy and rural development at the COPADE Foundation, and Carmen Avilés, professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, will talk.

In this dialogue, Fernando Magdaleno, Deputy Director General of Terrestrial and Marine Biodiversity, and Jordi Cortina, Professor of Ecology at the University of Alicante; they talk about the application of the Nature Restoration Law and the opportunities it presents.

The bioeconomy It is key to rural development: it boosts sustainability, transforms waste into resources, fixes population and promotes innovation in harmony with nature. Francés Boya, general secretary for the Demographic Challenge of MITECO, and Gabriel Gascón, professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, talk.

Spain is making progress in the circular economy with strategies, laws or key instruments such as the PERTE. It is an environmental necessity and an opportunity for the competitiveness of companies and SMEs. In this dialogue, they talk Alejandro Dorado Nájera, Commissioner for the Circular Economy of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, and Alberto Ruiz Rodríguez, Advisory Member in the Cabinet of the Minister of Industry and Tourism.

Watan Mohammed, Climate activist (YOUNGO), and Elisa Granzzoto, Lawyer (World’s Youth for Climate Justice), vindicate the role of young people in COPs, the need for their ideas and demands to be heard.

In a new #Dialogos, Carlos Alvarado, President of Costa Rica (2018-2022) and Member of Club de Madrid, and Raekwon Chung, Board Director, Ban Ki-Moon Foundation for a Better Future and Former Climate Change Ambassador, Korea, discuss the role and power of the consumer in tackling the climate crisis.

Financing is one of the big topics of debate at COP28. Nathan Fabian, Chief Executive Officer Principles for Responsible Investment, and Irene Heemskerk, Head of the Climate Change Centre. European Central Bank, talk about the economic solutions to achieve Net Zero.

Nicole Becker, co-founder of Youth for Climate Argentina and Nisreen Elsaim, chair of the Sudanese Youth for Climate organization highlight the need to incorporate young people in negotiation processes, in decision-making and incorporate them into the political agenda.

Wilson García, general director of INSIVUMEH of Guatemala and Valentina Saavedra, Climate Change specialist at the IDB in Costa Rica, delve into the importance of participation and governance in development and adaptation projects to Climate Change in Central America. In his opinion, a multi-stakeholder and multi-level approach and greater institutional coordination (local, national and regional) is essential to improve the management of project information, its replicability and the design of regional policies and strategies in this area.

María José Sanz from the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) and Shrey Goyal, Head of Observer Delegation of UNFCCC for COP27, delve into the importance of adaptation to Climate Change. Natural disasters in the form of forest fires and heat waves suffered by developed countries, especially during the last summer, have definitively put the spotlight on the need to implement measures to adapt to Climate Change. A task in which they can learn a lot from developing countries, which have been applying simple, creative and effective solutions at the local level for years.

Marine ecologist specializing in Climate Change Carlos Duarte and Rick Fox, former NBA player, actor and ambassador of the Bahamas for sport, address the involvement of developing island countries in solving environmental problems. Initiatives such as sustainable and resilient construction and the commitment to the capacity of its coastal ecosystems to store blue carbon can contribute to this task.

Antoni Ballabriga, Global Head of Responsible Business at BBVA, and Helena Viñes, Director of the National Securities Market Commission, delve into the work of the EU Taxonomy Development Platform – of which Viñes is a member – and its implications for the financial system. The taxonomy seeks to classify economic activities according to their environmental sustainability. Its objective is to direct private investment to contribute to the ecological transition and the goal of a climate-neutral European Union, before 2050.

Within the framework of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt), Antón Leis, director of AECID and María Sánchez-Bayo González, representative of the Generation Climate Initiative, address the importance of combining adaptation and mitigation to climate change with development cooperation. The objective, in his opinion, is to green the cooperation agenda to combine human development, social cohesion and ecological transition. The participation of young people in this process is essential due to the need for innovation in the search for solutions to environmental problems.

Every June 17, the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought is celebrated. This year Spain was designated as the host country to host this celebration, which brought together different speakers at the Reina Sofía National Museum to participate in a conference focused on the urgency of adopting policies and measures at a local, regional and global scale to avoid the effects of desertification and drought, as well as on creating societies that are more resilient to these environmental problems. Two of the participants in that day, Patricia Kombo, founder of the PaTree Initiative and UNCCD Land Hero, and Teresa Langle de Paz, director of the Women for Africa Foundation, discussed the important role of rural women in mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Every June 17, the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought is celebrated. This year Spain was designated as the host country to host this celebration, which brought together different speakers at the Reina Sofía National Museum to participate in a conference focused on the urgency of adopting policies and measures at a local, regional and global scale to avoid the effects of desertification and drought, as well as on creating societies that are more resilient to these environmental problems. Two of the participants in that day, Pilar Paneque, head of the Citizen Observatory of Drought and Professor of Human Geography at the Pablo de Olavide University, and Elena López Gunn, CEO of ICATALIST and member of Group 2 of the IPCC, discussed the importance of adopting measures to curb the effects of desertification.

At the stand of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge at CONAMA, a new #DiálogosCONAMA is being held with Elena Pita, director of the Biodiversity Foundation, and Cristina Rivero, director of the Department of Industry, Energy, Environment and Climate of the CEOE.

The stand of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) becomes in this fifteenth edition of CONAMA a place for meeting and dialogue, in which activities of the different units of the Ministry will take place.