Climate Change in Latin America - European Commission

Sustainable Development
and Climate Change at the V Latin
America and Caribbean-European
Union Summit
Climate Change is the most serious challenge of our
time and a large-scale global problem that involves
complex interactions between climatological, environmental,
economic, social, political and institutional
processes.
Attempts to adapt and mitigate climatological impact
share some common objectives with efforts to
promote sustainable development, such as: access
to resources (including knowledge), equity in the
distribution of resources and citizen participation
mechanisms, risk distribution and decision making
skills to tackle situations of uncertainty (Figure 1).
Sustainable development: the environment, climate
change and energy was one of the key issues at the
V Summit between the heads of state and government
of Latin America and the Caribbean-European Union,
which took place in May 2008 in Lima, and at which
Latin American and EU countries signed the Lima
Declaration.
The Lima Declaration underlines the close
relationship between development opportunities
and a concerted search for actions
which can be taken against Climate Change:
"overcoming poverty, inequality and exclusion
is crucial to achieve social cohesion" […]
"Environmental degradation and Climate
Change seriously affect our economic growth,
they especially harm the poor and are seriously
threatening all of the future perspectives of our
peoples".
During the meeting, the leaders of all parties
committed to:
• boosting bi-regional cooperation with an integrated
view on environmental matters, mainly
focused on Climate Change, desertification,
energy, water, biodiversity, forests, fishing
resources and the handling of chemical products.
Above all, they committed to achieve this through
economic policies that take into account
the needs of protecting the environment and
strengthening social inclusion;
• building the EU-LAC dialogue on the foundations
of the bi-regional negotiations that were held
in Bali, with the aim of deepening bi-regional
coordination, along with the collective coope
ration activities that led to the COP 15 in
Copenhagen and the establishment, during
the same period, of an ambitious and global
agreement on the Second Period of Compliance
with the post-2012 Kyoto Protocol.
Regional cooperation between the European Commission
and Latin America is creating the opportunity
to strengthen the multilateral system of actions and
compromises, making this system more effective and
facilitating new synergies in common global issues.
The goal of the dialogue should be a holistic focus
that makes it possible to connect social, ethic, cultural
and environmental elements on the one hand and
aspects of sustainable development on the other.
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