Chile is progressing under a broad participatory process to design its long-term climate strategy. These strategies, known as LTS, enable governments to define the actions that are required in the long, medium and short term to stop the climate crisis. They aim to maximize the benefits of the transition to net-zero emission and resilient economies and consider how to avoid exacerbating problems and seize the opportunities for sustainable development while focusing on the people in their territories.
Informed by science and opportunities for sustainable development, many countries have already made the decision to transition to carbon neutral economies by 2050 and have defined their LTSs including the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, New Zealand, Bhutan and Costa Rica. Many others are in the design process including Chile, Colombia and Peru. In many cases, these strategies are being used to help lay the foundation for a sustainable recovery to confront the global pandemic.
To successfully achieve carbon neutrality building a joint country vision is required
The climate crisis affects us all. The response therefore requires a national conversation. An LTS that does not consider multiple development objectives, national priorities, and local and institutional realities is likely to be ultimately unfeasible in its implementation.
Achieving carbon neutrality is possible: the technologies and solutions exist for the transformations required in all sectors of the economy. For example, we can enable a massive deployment of energy from renewable sources and electrical technologies such as electric vehicles. These technologies are increasingly cheaper and contribute to improving the air quality of our cities and creating jobs.
Latin America and the Caribbean can save USD 621 billion annually if the energy and transport sectors reach carbon neutrality by 2050. According to a recent IDB and ILO analysis, moving towards net-zero emissions in the region could generate 15 million jobs by 2030 in sectors such as sustainable agriculture, forestry, solar and wind energy, manufacturing and construction.
Carbon neutrality also goes hand in hand with increased use of public and non-motorized transportation, reducing waste of energy and food consumption, and protecting and regenerating natural ecosystems such as forests and mangroves. It is critical to carry out robust technical analyzes and jointly build a multi-stakeholder dialogue and vision of how we want to see our countries’ future development.
Chile’s experience shows how to do a broad consultation and co-construction process
Chile has worked on a state policy to confront climate change that is strengthened with the Draft Framework Law on Climate Change, which was submitted to Congress in January 2020. This project establishes the country’s carbon neutrality and resilience goal for 2050. The way to achieve this goal, the objectives, targets and sector indicators will be defined in the Long-Term Climate Strategy (ECLP) that is being developed currently and must also consider the updated NDC that Chile presented last April.
The design of the ECLP is focused on a process that takes place throughout this year with more than 80 workshops and participatory activities with government representatives from different ministries and agencies, at the national and sub-national levels, the private sector (productive and financial) , academia and civil society, with representation at the regional, ethnic and gender levels that allows enriching and informing a joint vision by 2050.
This broad process is being led by Chile’s Ministry of the Environment, working jointly with all other areas of the government and will culminate in 2021 with a formal citizen consultation of the proposed Long-Term Climate Strategy.
This exercise also has the technical and financial support of international agencies, including the IDB, UNDP, UN Environment, FAO, ECLAC, GIZ, the European Union, Euroclima+, GEF, NDC Partnership and the World Bank.
Despite the large number of donors and multiple activities, these efforts are not fragmented or repetitive. On the contrary, thanks to the leadership of the Ministry of the Environment and the spirit of collaboration of all these entities, these efforts are coordinated to add value and generate synergies. For example, a unique work schedule and logical framework has been created, which clarifies the objectives and synergies of different activities and their role in informing the ECLP.
In June, with the support of its French Climate Fund, the IDB held 6 sectoral virtual workshops to inform robust strategies for carbon neutrality in the energy, transport, industry and mining, waste, agriculture, forests and biodiversity sectors. The workshops were attended by more than 148 people and the results will be used to inform academic-led quantitative analysis, where robust decision-making methods are applied to identify climate mitigation options that offer greater development benefits and manageable costs for the country.
These workshops are an example of how the vision of local actors can be used as the basis for the development of technical analyzes. Furthermore, the workshops were coordinated with another round of workshops supported by the World Bank with whom we ensured the greatest possible synergies.
Decarbonization and sustainable recovery require everyone’s participation
For all sectors and civil society to participate, we need to create spaces to receive their contributions. Recent workshops in Chile are an excellent model to follow. Furthermore, Chile is also an example of effective channeling of international cooperation. Demonstrating that from the design process of an LTS, not only is it possible to facilitate joint work of various actors at the national level but also the direction and articulation of international cooperation.
The IDB continues to support Chile and other LAC countries with the design of LTS through NDC INVEST‘s DDPLAC project. Always with a collaborative spirit linked to the objective that we all share, in this case that Chile has a robust and co-constructed LTS that can guide it towards carbon neutrality by 2050 and strengthen its resilience and improve the quality of life for all Chileans.
Further reading:
Jobs in a Net-Zero Emissions Future in Latin America and the Caribbean
Getting to Net-Zero Emissions: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean
NDC INVEST Bulletin: ACL in Numbers: Vol. 2, July 2020
Electric buses offer Latin American and Caribbean transport a green and profitable future
Photo: Flickr – Bilobicles
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