May 17, 2012
- European Union Sustainable Energy Week events will take place across Europe. Events in Brussels will center around a high-level conference on the sustainable energy sector, which is expected to draw 4,000 participants from over 50 countries. Throughout the week other events will take place in parallel to draw attention to energy efficiency and sustainable energy themes.
May 10, 2012
- An Informal Ministerial Roundtable on Climate Change brought together representatives from 30 countries, including from LDCs and AOSIS. The Roundtable was convened by Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action, who called on countries to keep up the momentum created in Durban on climate change and to make progress at Rio+20.
May 8, 2012
- The European Commission Vice-President responsible for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, highlighted that ICT could deliver innovations allowing households to be energy suppliers, street lights that adjust to the presence of people, grid-integrated electrical vehicles, and environment responsive home heating systems.
- The meeting saw the signing of a Joint Declaration on EU-China Partnership on Urbanization, an EU-China Joint Declaration on Energy Security and a Joint Statement for Enhanced Cooperation on Electricity Markets between the European Commission and the State Electricity Regulatory Commission of China.
May 7, 2012
- The European Commission has published guidelines for a technical review of EU Member States’ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventories. The technical review is required by the Commission to facilitate setting national limits on non-EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) emissions for the period 2013-2020.
May 4, 2012
- The European Environment Agency (EEA) has released a series of maps that predict climate change impacts in Europe through 2100. Predicting both temperature and precipitation trends across Europe, the EEA highlights that the maps project trends that could result in increased heat waves, droughts and floods, impacting water supply, agriculture and human health.
- A Caribbean Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) Council was created on 26 April 2012 to unite ten Caribbean islands in their development cooperation relationship with the EU. The Council will focus on sustainable development, with working groups creating plans for such topics as climate change, renewable energy, waste management and disaster management.
May 3, 2012
- A grant agreement was signed by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the EU and the African Union (AU) for support of the ClimDev Africa programme, a flagship initiative in the Africa-EU Partnership on Climate Change and Development.
May 1, 2012
- The EU, Japan and the World Bank/Global Facility of Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) convened a meeting of donor and developing country officials who discussed means of increasing resilience through, inter alia: cooperation; the coordination of humanitarian and development programmes; integrated approaches; and the reversal of the reaction versus prevention paradigm.
April 26, 2012
- The Climate and Clean Air Coalition, which aims to take fast action to reduce short lived climate pollutants that have a direct impact on climate change, welcomed Colombia, Japan, Nigeria, Norway, the European Commission and the World Bank as new partners. They join the founding members of the Coalition, namely Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Mexico, Sweden, the US and UNEP.