The 1st ICLEI Amazon Regional Meeting, organized by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability – South America, the Humanize Institute and the City Hall Barcarena, with the support of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM Americas), took place in the city of Barcarena/PA, Brazil, on August 1st, 2nd and 3rd.
The session of the “Pan-Amazon Cities Forum (FCPA) – Local Governments of Brazil as Agents of Change and Leaders in Climate Action in the Amazon Region”, which took place on August 2nd, provided a space for reflection among local government networks and municipal managers on how cities are agents of change and leaders in climate action in the Amazon region.
Participating in the panel were Rodrigo Perpétuo, Executive Secretary of ICLEI South America, Gláucia Macedo, Public Management Manager of the Humanize Institute, and Valentina Falkenstein, Helpdesk Coordinator of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy in the Americas. Uolli Briotto, ICLEI South America regional advisor, was responsible for moderating the panel, which also included the participation of Mayor Francineti Carvalho, from Abaetetuba/PA, as well as environment secretaries from the municipalities of Palmas/TO, Porto Velho/RO, Manaus/AM, Belém/PA and Barcarena/PA.
The city managers reported their experiences in the first face-to-face session of the Forum of Pan-Amazonian Cities (FCPA) held in Leticia, Colombia, from July 12th to 14th, as well as the need to look at and propose projects for the local governments of the Amazon, considering their challenges and their particularities.
Forum of Pan-Amazonian Cities (FCPA)
The Forum of Pan-Amazonian Cities (FCPA) was created to strengthen regional representation and foster the exchange of knowledge and experiences among local governments, aiming to promote sustainable development. Currently, it gathers representatives from Amazonian cities from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru.
The Forum acts as a cooperation mechanism to position the Amazonian cities as global references in sustainable urban development, in which managers collaborate mutually in the implementation of monitoring measures and efforts to implement global sustainability frameworks.
According to Rodrigo Perpétuo, executive secretary of ICLEI South America, the event aims to present preliminary results of the Amazonia 2030 project and other initiatives. “This is the first ICLEI meeting in the Brazilian Amazon. We represent local authorities from all over the world in the global climate and biodiversity agendas. Being here to hold this meeting means listening to the demands, the challenges, the difficulties, the potentialities of the Amazonian cities and to organize key messages to take to these conferences that will take place, the UN Climate Change Conference 2022 (COP 27) in November, in Egypt; and the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in December, in Montreal, Canada”, he pointed out.
The cities of Belém and Barcarena join the GCoM
The city of Belém (PA) has become the latest Brazilian capital to join the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), a project funded by the European Union. On Monday evening, August 1st, during the I ICLEI Amazon Regional Meeting the Mayor of Belém, Edmilson Rodrigues, signed the commitment letter that integrates the municipality to the network.
“It is an act of commitment to the future, of commitment to the kind of development that brings us social justice, justice to nature, and democracy. Signing this pact is showing that the Amazon biodiversity has to be preserved and the Amazon cities are part of this ecosystem”, said Mayor Edmilson.
The municipality of Barcarena (PA) also joined the GCoM and committed itself to the fight against climate change and reducing its impacts. “Including our city in this network that has already been working on the subject and, searching for good practices, good experiences, to be able to apply them in the municipality of Barcarena, makes the municipality more and more committed to climate causes and certainly this ends up being reflected in people’s daily lives. So, in search of this social well-being, we adhere to this pact, and I am sure that we have chosen the right partners to walk in this fight”, pointed out the mayor.
About the I ICLEI Amazon Regional Meeting
The ICLEI Brazil Regional Meetings aim at bringing together local governments associated with ICLEI and its partners (universities, private sector, third sector organizations), presenting international trends, and promoting awareness of various actors on the most important issues of sustainable urban development. The meetings adopt an instrumental approach based on examples of good practice and exchange of successful experiences in the path of each of the five development paths promoted by ICLEI.
Local and regional governments, in this context, play a leading role in addressing the climate emergency so that concrete results can be achieved. The development of urban climate justice goes beyond issues such as equity and representation, as it also considers environmentally damaging human actions and how the devastating consequences are felt primarily by the most vulnerable.
All panels from the meeting are available on ICLEI’s YouTube channel. Watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzkQ_zHnu9UqxzpM8KtV9WkK5I53fiCOQ
