The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and the Environment has presented today, coinciding with the entry into force of the Paris Agreement, a pioneering public awareness initiative carried out jointly by eight entities to move “from commitment to action” in the fight against climate change.
The Community #PorElClima initiative, presented today during an event held at the Madrid Press Association, was attended by representatives of more than 20 entities from various sectors and was closed by the Director General of the Spanish Office for Climate Change, Valvanera Ulargui.
The #PorElClima Community has emerged from the “One Million Commitments” campaign that brought more than one million climate commitments from entities and citizens to Paris in 2015, on the occasion of the Climate Summit. With this new project, its promoters want to highlight two of the great keys in the fight against climate change. The first of them, according to the heads of the entities that spoke today at the presentation ceremony, is that we all have to act, since the fight against climate change is not a responsibility of a single sector, but a collective challenge.
This is also evidenced by the composition of the driving group, which includes the Spanish Office for Climate Change and the Biodiversity Foundation, dependent on the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and the Environment, business entities, such as the Spanish Green Growth Group and the Global Compact, social NGOs such as the Red Cross, and environmental projects such as WWF, SEO/BirdLife and ECODES.
The second key to this initiative is that it is necessary to act now because every day we know new data that alert us to the point of no return that we are reaching in many of the parameters of sustainability, and insists on the idea that we are the last generation that can stop the disaster.
SENSE OF URGENCY
For this reason, it is necessary to move from commitment to action “with a sense of urgency” and that is why the Community #PorElClima intends to publicise what many public and private entities are already doing, as well as to help citizens as a whole to do what is in their power to fight climate change.
During the presentation ceremony, representatives of more than 20 entities have assessed that November 4, 2016 will go down in history as the day on which the Paris Agreement came into force, which will help to face the greatest challenge facing humanity today: climate change. They also underlined the importance of the initiative, which is presented three days before the start of the Marrakech Climate Summit (COP22).
The Driving Group thanked the first Global Partners of the initiative (REE and Ecoembes), the first Strategic Partners (AEAS, AEF, AEOPAS, APIA, Fundación por la Conservación Association, BCORP Spain, Climate Reality, Coca Cola, Consejo Abogacía Española, DKV, DO2, Ferrovial, Forética, Fundación Conama, Fundación Oxygen, Fundación Renovables, Iberdrola) and the Collaborators (Ambilamp, Ecoalf, Espigoladors, Pastores, Respiro and Zoilo Ríos).
From now on, the Community will grow and promote new actions of entities that will be progressively incorporated. All the news can be followed through the www.porelclima.es website
The event was closed by Valvanera Ulargui, director of the Spanish Office for Climate Change, who pointed out that “we are moving from commitment to action, to show that these commitments can be put into practice. The objective of this initiative is to seek a common space where we can all bet on low-carbon development”.
