On 14 December 2016, the European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete and Vice-President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Dr Masoumeh Ebtekar who is also head of the Department of Environment, held a high level meeting on climate change in Brussels. Both sides confirmed their commitment to work closely together to support the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
The meeting follows the recent entry into force of the world's first global deal to tackle climate change. The historic agreement became international law on 4 November 2016, less than a year after it was agreed in Paris by almost 200 countries.
This joint statement focuses on formulating means of cooperation to address the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change. It builds on the joint statement by the High Representative of the European Union, Federica Mogherini, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Javad Zarif, in April 2016, expressing the intention to develop a broad and comprehensive agenda for bilateral cooperation.
The cooperation on climate change between the EU and Iran aims to support the implementation of the agreement, and in particular the national climate plans (Nationally Determined Contributions) put forward by countries. This includes the preparation of mid-century strategies, as well as capacity building, facilitating enhanced and cooperative action on technology development and transfer, climate finance and monitoring reporting and verification (MRV) systems for the new transparency regime.
It will also support efforts to seize the opportunities that ambitious climate action offers to foster innovation and investments in the green economy, create jobs, improve the quality of life for all citizens and ensure a sustainable future, as well as protect citizens, assets and ecosystems from the impacts of climate change.
The two sides intend to enhance collaboration with all stakeholders and actors in the context of the Global Climate Action Agenda. This includes supporting the promotion of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy initiative, while at the same time encouraging synergies with other initiatives for green cities and sustainable urban development such as the City Prosperity Initiative for Metropolitan Cities (CPI-MC) under UN-Habitat.
They will also support the integration of climate change objectives into all policy areas, enhance cross-sector and inter-Ministerial cooperation including support for capacity building. They will assess options for future projects on climate action such as twinning schemes and explore possible synergies with existing projects and with regional processes such as those in the Southern and Eastern European Neighbourhood and Central Asia region.
This cooperation on climate change will be closely linked to the technical cooperation on energy and on environment protection in order to maximize synergies between policy areas.
Details
- Publication date
- 14 December 2016
- Author
- Directorate-General for Climate Action