Cities demand their leading role in the fight against climate change.
At the opening of the C40 Global Mayors Summit in Buenos Aires, representatives from more than a hundred cities warned this Thursday of the need to speed up actions to reduce global warming.
They also committed to creating 50 million green jobs before the end of the decade.
“The science was wrong.
Our climate is deteriorating at a much faster rate than the most pessimistic climate models were saying," said the Summit's chair, London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
“Humanity is turning the climate into a weapon of mass destruction.
A more powerful and deadlier weapon with each passing year,” he added.
Khan announced that the cities that make up the C40 commit "to deliver 50 million green jobs by the end of the decade."
The main sectors of sustainable job creation will be construction, transport and renewable energies.
The participants of the summit, the most important world event on cities and climate change, thus seek to contribute to the fulfillment of the goals of the Paris Agreement against global warming.
However, the mayors warned that these goals cannot be met without the commitment of national governments and large companies.
"While many cities are moving forward, there are many national governments that are refusing to do so," Khan said.
The mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, vice president of C40, was even more critical than her London counterpart and asked to name the main polluters on the planet.
“A few are getting rich in an obscene, pornographic way, at the cost of destroying the planet and generating more inequality every day.
Five countries are responsible for 60% of global emissions;
only 20 companies emit 35%”, explained Colau.
The mayor of Madrid has not attended the summit.
The mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, and the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, during a meeting with the press prior to the C40 Summit. BARCELONA CITY COUNCIL (Europa Press)
The mayor of Barcelona stressed that the rulers must decide "whether they feed the economy of the past or that of the future" and gave as an example the dispute over the expansion of El Prat airport, which she opposes on the grounds that these resources should be used to improve public transport and make it more sustainable.
“It has been possible to stop it due to an action by the citizens,” she stressed.
Colau added that the green economy is already generating opportunities and thousands of jobs.
"In Barcelona alone we are talking about 45,000 quality jobs," he said in statements to the press prior to the summit.
The new jobs that Barcelona expects to create between now and 2030 are linked to strategic projects such as the transformation of the Besós or Mercedes del Bon Pastor industrial estates, the impact of the aid for the rehabilitation of buildings and the promotion of new construction of public housing and the development of the model related to the Superilla public space in Barcelona, among others.
A platform for the host
The host of the summit, the mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, has used the event as an international presentation platform for his candidacy for the 2023 presidential elections. In his message, Rodríguez Larreta highlighted that the summit it is an opportunity to put aside differences and work together, a group in an internal key.
The mayor disputes his candidacy for Together for Change, the center-right alliance that governed Argentina between 2015 and 2019, with the most radicalized sectors of the coalition, which have former president Mauricio Macri as a reference.
“Our country has been divided for decades, but thanks to this summit, throughout this year, we had 150 mayors from all over the country, of different political stripes, who worked together and put the climate change agenda as a priority.
It is a huge achievement.
It shows that there is a different path in Argentina.
It shows that we can dialogue, that we can work together.
It is a new Argentina”, said Rodríguez Larreta in an electoral tone.
Rodríguez Larreta's intention is to represent a center option that neutralizes the polarization that fractures Argentine politics.
At one end is Macri;
in the other the leftist Cristina Kirchner, today vice president.
The mayor of Buenos Aires asked to banish some prejudices about caring for the environment, such as thinking that it is incompatible with economic development or believing that someone can be exempt from the consequences of climate change, such as droughts, floods and fires.
Criticism from environmentalists
The summit has also invited environmental activists from around the world, who have called for urgent action.
"These meetings are increasing, but the quality of the cities is deteriorating," Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, a leader of the NGO Fridays for Future in Uganda, denounced on stage at the Buenos Aires Convention Center.
Nakabuye has called on world leaders to stop making promises and act.
Other activists have refused to participate in the event and have organized parallel protests and actions throughout the city.
"In the C40 there is no talk of living green vegetation or absorbent soil while the squares are cemented, they are filled with plastic and the few trees that remain are destroyed," said the head of the Argentine organization Enough to mutilate our trees, María Angélica di Giacomo, at a protest held Tuesday behind the Casa Rosada.
Yesterday Melted BsAs convened by @bastademutilar @bastadedemoler and @fundacionciudad at the press conference/demonstration/performance making visible that the GCABA does the opposite of what we need to protect ourselves from the climate crisis.
SPECTACULAR.
And photos are missing pic.twitter.com/4Fi2LTo5sZ
– Stop mutilating our trees (@bastademutilar) October 19, 2022
“The railway yards, the under viaducts and the river coast are our last possibilities to increase the absorbent land per inhabitant and we are losing them due to real estate projects for the benefit of a few.
We do not want the green, the horizon and the river to benefit the wealthiest classes”, Di Giacomo added.
The C40 Global Mayors Summit will run until Friday in Buenos Aires.
In addition to the aforementioned leaders, among the participants are also the mayors of Paris, Anne Hidalgo and of Bogotá, Claudia López;
and the mayors of Miami, Francis Suárez, and São Paulo, Ricardo Nunes.
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