R20, committed to combating climate change

In 2009, at the COP 15 held in Copenhagen, a few regions, large companies, UN agencies and financial institutions decided to join forces around the Governor of the State of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to create  R20: Regions of Climate Action. 

From 2011 to the Paris COP 21 in December 2015, R20 devoted every effort to demonstrate the capacity of territories to identify, develop and implement projects on green infrastructures in the field of renewable energies, energy efficiency and waste management. Thus, R20 carried out projects in Algeria (Wilaya de Oran) on waste management, in Mali (Kita Region) on the production of solar energy and in Brazil (State of Mato Grosso) on LED public lighting, playing an essential role of facilitator among the territories in which action takes place, the State that sets the rules, the private companies experts in the necessary technologies and their auxiliary services, and the investors that finance the projects by means of debt or equity. 

In view of these successful experiences, among others, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Director-General for UNFCCC, Kristina Figueres, and the President of COP 21, Minister Laurent Fabius, encouraged R20 to scale up this approach of territory-based projects. R20 is currently developing a complete value chain with a financial ecosystem based on four main axes: i.) a campaign to identify green infrastructure projects; ii.) pre-investment funds that will allow to carry out the feasabilty studies required to obtain funds for the projects; iii.) investment funds to ensure the projects funding and lastly iv.) ensuring the ability to measure, assess and verify the impact of these projects.  

At this new development stage, the Leonardo di Caprio Foundation approached R20 to finance as a start the campaign to identify 100 projects, to which ORU Fogar has effectively contributed by asking its members to submit their projects. I would particularly like to thank its Secretary-General Carles Llorens for the great effort made in such short time. 

R20, together with numerous networks and associations of regions and cities, set out to prove, at the Marrakech COP22, the efficiency of solutions with a bottom-up approach, which can be complementary to the top-down approach of the United Nations with the national governments.  

To conclude, a topic of particular interest to me, in a regional world mainly dominated by men, is the promotion of women’s environmental.  In this regard, R20 will launch, at the COP 22, a fund devoted to women’s action in the field of renewable energies, energy efficiency and waste management.

R20, member of ORU Fogar, wishes to play a prominent role in the fight against climate change.

Michèle Sabban

President of R20