Dear colleagues, partners and friends,
 

We hope that this newsletter find you and your families in good health. We all finds ourselves in unknown territory, trying to comprehend the scale and impacts of the COVID-19 situation.

During the last three weeks the offices of UNEP DTU Partnership, located in the UN City in Copenhagen, Denmark have been closed. We have, however not been closed for business. We have been working from home more committed than ever to delivering support and results, partnering with our international and national partners, realising that many friends and colleagues in our collaborating institutions in the developing world are facing major challenges.

The situation requires us to think and act differently. We will continue to engage with you all digitally, until the situation is changing. We are aware, that it may indeed be difficult to engage digitally in all corners of the world, but we ask you to reach out to us and together we will find solutions.  

We have taken note that COP26 has been postponed, we fully support the decision of the UNFCCC and COP Presidency. COVID-19 is the most urgent threat facing humanity today and the immediate priority must be to protect people from the coronavirus. While the economic consequences of the crisis are dire and greenhouse gas emissions are going down in the short term, we must not forget that climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity over the longer term.

When countries get through the COVID-19 crises there will be a need to stimulate economies, and many experts currently in the international media advocate for green stimulus packages to shape the revived economies in ways that are more clean, green, healthy and more resilient. This is evidently highly desirable but will not happen automatically especially in a world that is fiscally constrained with many competing demands. So it will be important in the next months to present concrete proposals for activities that are both efficient, job-creation oriented and green in the broadest sense.

In this newsletter we have gathered a handful of stories on some of our work, which in a very small way hopefully illustrate some of the actions that can be taken. We hope that you find them interesting and useful.

We look forward to engaging with all of you directly again, but until then we wish you and your families good health.

Yours Sincerely,

John Christensen

Director, UNEP DTU Partnership (UDP)

Members of the Argentinian Network of Municipalities Against Climate Change (RAMCC) have entered into a historical agreement to jointly purchase LED luminaires to replace conventional street lighting bulbs. Thirty-two municipalities have bundled their sustainability and climate action investments in, and created a trust fund that  currently holds 12 million Argentinian Pesos, approximately 200.000 USD.

In February, 8 of the 32 municipalities entered the process of investing in more than a thousand LED luminaries for street lightning, through this trust fund.

UNEP DTU Partnership experts under the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) project have helped Sri Lanka in designing a national Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system for the transport sector as well as revising transport related NDC policies. 

The ICAT project in Sri Lanka has been a successful collaboration between the Climate Change Secretariat of the Ministry of Mahaweli Development and Environment, the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, UNEP DTU Partnership and the local consultancy team, Climate Smart Initiative.

This collaboration has resulted in a unique institutional arrangement for data collection and the development of the country’s first MRV system for climate action.