Mrs. Figueres' Journey to Global Optimism: Achieving the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, Dispense di Politica Economica

Scarica Mrs. Figueres' Journey to Global Optimism: Achieving the Paris Agreement on Climate Change e più Dispense in PDF di Politica Economica solo su Docsity! SUMMARY ON CLIMATE CHANGE On December 12%, 2015, in Paris, under the auspices of the United Nations, 195 governments reunited and unanimously decided to change the course of the global economy, to protect the most vulnerable ones and to improve everyone’s life. It was a remarkable achievement, if we consider what happened a few years before, in 2009, in Copenhagen, where the Governments failed miserably in this duty because of the discrepancy between the North of the world and the South. In the following years, nobody thought this achievement would be ever reached, neither Mrs Figueres (the speaker) did. One day, throughout a press conference, Mrs Figures was asked if the global agreement was ever going to be possible and she replied by saying “not in my lifetime “. From that moment on, Mrs Figures decided to change her attitude and to help the world to change its mindset on climate change: “we must do it by changing the tone of the conversation because there is no way we could deliver victory without Optimism”. Optimism must be understood as a synonym of Courage, Hope, Trust, Solidarity. These are the fundamental beliefs that humans must embrace to come together and change the fate of mankind. For six years, from 2009 to 2015, Mrs Figueres stubbornly, constantly injected optimism into the system, no matter of the contrary evidence. Pretty soon, changes began to be seen in many areas. The first area was Technology, because “clean technology” gives cleaner air, better transportation, in sum, a better world for us and for our children. With this change in technology, it was noticed that there was a shift in the economic equation, as the climate change is undoubtedly onerous, since there are some risks, but there are also many economic advantages. It also brought broad participation as investors, financial services sectors, air transport sectors, faith communities, started to understand that this switch could be positive for their interests and, therefore, National benefits were reached. When it was asked to the countries to begin to identify how they could contribute to global efforts, 189 countries out of 195 sent their plans to fight climate change, based on their national interests and their economic priorities and coherent with their national’s sustainable development plans. “It is going to take years, but we are going to make it happen. Every country is going to contribute even if in a different way, different approach but with a common goal”, Mrs Figueres stated. Starting with the right mindset, travelling to Paris and adopt the Paris Agreement was possible.