Climate Change in Latin America - European Commission

1.4.3. Networks
RIOCC - The Ibero-American Network of Climate
Change Offices is formed by a commission of
coordinators, made up of the directors of the
21 Climate Change Offices in the member states 14 .
The Director-General of the Spanish Climate Change
Office acts as the head coordinator.
The aim of this Network is to serve as a tool that
links the Ibero-American countries together in order
to make Climate Change part of political dialogue
at the highest level, as well as to give an impulse to
strategies involving sustainable development and a
low carbon economy, and the identification of common
problems and solutions on the subject of the
impact of and vulnerability and adaption to Climate
Change. The RIOCC works under the supervision
of Ibero-American Ministers of the Environment, to
whom it also reports. In turn, the Ministers present
the RIOCC's most relevant conclusions to the
Ibero-American Summit, thereby guaranteeing
political support. Most of the RIOCC's efforts and
work have focused on adaptation, which has led to
the establishment of the so-called Ibero-American
Programme for the Evaluation of Climate Change
Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation (PIACC).
The Araucaria XXI programme is a Spanish Cooperation
instrument for the protection of the environment
and sustainable development in Ibero-American.
It provides support to the PIACC, to the Clean
Development Mechanism and to the strengthening of
capabilities and the promotion of dialogue with the
region and the participating institutions, through their
"Climate Change" activity programme. The following
projects that have been identified and promoted
by the Network are worth mentioning: project to
evaluate the level of vulnerability of marine coastal
areas to Climate Change; the cooperative project
on Climate Change mitigation and adaptation for
sustainable forest management in Ibero-America (the
MIA - TroFCCA - FORMA projects also benefit from
support from the EU), run by CATIE, Brazil's training
proposal for the use of regional modelling systems;
the support project for Paraguay's National Climate
Change Office and the pilot humanitarian aid project
for the reduction of social-environmental vulnerability;
and improvements to Climate Change adaptation in
Central America (AECI - Araucaria XXI Projects).
ACCLAC - The Alliance for Climate Change
Mitigation and Adaptation and Risk Management
in Latin America and the Caribbean is funded
by the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher
Education Centre (CATIE), the German Cooperation
Agency (GTZ), The Inter-American Institute for
Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), The Tropic Forest
Foundation (TTF) and the University for International
Cooperation (UCI). Itis an organisation whose aim is to
carry out activities to promote ecological awareness
and justice, as well as access to instruments that
make it possible to mitigate and adapt to Climate
Change. They aim to achieve this through the active
participation of the greatest possible number of
agents (central and local governments; business
organisations and all social activists). They act across
the board in each region and part of their projects
includes facilitating and empowering dialogue,
creative activities and the spread of knowledge
amongst the different agents (the systematisation
of experience with mitigation and adaptation and
the development of Climate Change models and
scenarios for agriculture).
RIMD - The Inter-American Network for Disaster
Mitigation was set up by the Department of Sustainable
Development (DSD/OAS) with the support from
the Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA), as a permanent mechanism in the hemisphere
to strengthen practical collaboration between intergovernmental
agencies on the subject of disaster
reduction. It particularly focuses on the exchange of
technical information and good practices, as well as
providing support for the monitoring and review of the
Inter-American Strategic Plan for Policies on Reducing
Vulnerability, Managing Risk and Responding to
Disasters (IASP), so that the progress and lessons
learnt by different national and regional strategies
may be taken into account.
EIRD - Through its Regional Office for the Americas,
the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
promotes joint and coordinated action to reduce
socio-economic, humanitarian and development
disasters, and offers support in the integration of
different policies on the matter. They also work with
broadcasting information on the subject of disaster
reduction. They run awareness campaigns and
produce articles, promotional material, magazines
and publications related to disaster reduction.
14 Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, Guatemala, Honduras, México,
Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, the Dominican
Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela.
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