The environmental rights are a priority of the government of Catalonia. With the axis of Environmental Justice, the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation (ACCD) responds to the climate emergency from the gender and human rights approach, which articulates, at the same time, the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs.
This strategic work aims to prevent and reduce the effects of natural disasters, socio-environmental conflicts or climate migration. At the same time, it pursue to empower women and organizations that defend the right to land and the sustainable use of natural resources. Equally important for the Catalan cooperation is to develop capacity-building actions, exchange of experiences and alliances between local and global struggles. In Catalonia, the ACCD promotes education for committed citizenship about the climate crisis. Here are some examples:
- Building local climate resilience in Mozambique program. ACCD supports the Ministry of Land an Environment (MITA) and the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) in partnership with the EU and with technical assistance by the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF). The goal is to strengthen the government’s ability to reduce climate vulnerability through improving the delivery of climate resilient basic services to rural communities and enhancing knowledge-based decision-making processes. To do that it has launched a participatory, bottom-up approach. The initiative was present at COP26 to raise ambition on #LocallyLedAdaptation.
- Training Towards the ecological transformation of international cooperation. ACCD with the Rovira i Virgili University offered, last summer, this educational opportunity for professionals in the sector who wanted to deepen their knowledge on environmental issues and incorporate the perspective of environmental and climate justice in their work.
- Awareness program Get active for environmental justice. ACCD with the Culture Department and the specialized NGOs is offering at the Public Libraries of Catalonia activities for school audiences such as storytelling, booktubers for young people and reading clubs and video-forums for an adult audience. The aim is to provide information, critical debates and tools for individual and collective action.
More information:
- https://www.wacapnet.org/article/7260/building-locally-led-climate-resilience-in-mozambique
- http://cooperaciocatalana.gencat.cat/ca/que-fem/eixos/justicia-ambiental/