As part of the Club de Madrid efforts to achieve the goal of universal access to clean energy and to strengthen green growth policies, we joined today the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Climate Talks in Bonn. Mary Robinson, President of Ireland (1990-1997) and Member of the Club de Madrid has chaired a side event in Bonn entitled “Access to clean energy and green growth implementation – key answers to the climate change challenge”,
During discussions on how a shift to a green economy could best contribute to poverty alleviation, while ensuring development, and contributing the mitigating climate change, participants, including the Director of the Spanish Climate Change Office, Alicia Montalvo, the President of the Mexican National Institute of Ecology, Dr. Francisco Barnés Regueiro, and the Director of the UNDP Environment and Energy Group, Veerle Vandeweerd, identified the need to include access to clean energy as a key element of green growth policies and a key contribution to the fight against climate change.
“1.4 billion people in our world today do not have access to electricity, that’s a scandal in the 21st century, and it could be part of our approach that we close that gap very rapidly and that we provide the productive access to affordable energy.” Mary Robinson
The Club de Madrid has established since 2007 an Energy and Climate Change Program. We will continue working on the international climate arena and the universal access to clean energy issue, in addition, due to the current status of the international sustainable development negotiations, the Club de Madrid is re-orienting its activities, building on the previous work, to meaningfully contribute to the Green Growth Discussions and the outcomes of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
