Last week, environmental ministers from 27 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean gathered in Los Cabos, Mexico to discuss possibilities for regional cooperation around a series of environmental issues including climate change.
The forum, the nineteenth of its kind, included sustainable development, biodiversity, waste management, and climate change on its agenda. It focused heavily on the ways in which the attending nations could work collaboratively to face the region’s pressing environmental challenges.
Latin America and the Caribbean are responsible for only about 12.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but may suffer more of climate change’s severe effects than other, more industrialized regions.
At the end of the three-day meeting, delegates published Friday a final declaration noting that a climate change action plan will be designed jointly by Mexico, which presided over this forum, and Peru, as the seat of the Conference to the Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP20, to be held in Lima in December.
The plan will also have the support of countries that took part in the forum, and of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), with the clear objective of “adopting actions against the consequences of the increasing frequency of extreme climatic events.”
Read More: Latin American Herald Tribune>>