Cities are demanding their leading role in the fight against climate change. At the opening of the C40 Global Mayors Summit in Buenos Aires this Thursday, representatives from more than a hundred cities warned of the need to accelerate action to reduce global warming. They also pledged to create 50 million green jobs by the end of the decade.
“Science was wrong. Our climate is deteriorating much faster than the most pessimistic climate models have suggested,” said the summit’s chair, London Mayor Sadiq Khan. “Humanity is turning the climate into a weapon of mass destruction. A stronger and deadlier weapon with each passing year,” he added.
Khan announced that C40 cities are committing to “create 50 million green jobs by the end of the decade”. The main sectors of sustainable job creation will be construction, transport and renewable energy.
The participants of the summit, the world’s most important event on the subject of cities and climate change, want to contribute to the fulfillment of the goals of the Paris Agreement against global warming. However, the mayors warned that these goals cannot be achieved without the commitment of national governments and large companies.
“While many cities are moving forward, many national governments are refusing to do so,” Khan said. Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, C40 vice-president, was even more critical than her London counterpart, asking for the top polluters on the planet to be named. “A few get rich in obscene, pornographic ways at the cost of destroying the planet and creating more inequality every day. Five countries are responsible for 60% of global emissions; only 20 companies emit 35%,” explained Colau. The Mayor of Madrid did not attend the summit.
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau and London Mayor Sadiq Khan meet the press ahead of the C40 Summit BARCELONA CITY COUNCIL (Europa Press)
The mayor of Barcelona stressed that those in government had to decide “whether to feed the economy of the past or that of the future”, citing 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 was possible to stop it through action by citizens,” he stressed.
Colau added that the green economy is already creating opportunities and thousands of jobs. “In Barcelona alone we are talking about 45,000 quality jobs,” he said in press releases ahead of the summit. The new jobs that Barcelona expects to create by 2030 are linked to strategic projects such as the transformation of the commercial areas of Besós or Mercedes del Bon Pastor, the impact of the aid for the rehabilitation of buildings and the promotion of new public housing and the evolution of the model related to the public space Superilla 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, used the event as an international presentation platform for his candidacy for the 2023 presidential elections. Rodríguez Larreta stressed in his message that the summit is an opportunity to put differences aside to lay and work together, a group in an internal key. The mayor denies his candidacy for Together for Change, the centre-right coalition that governed Argentina between 2015 and 2019, with the most radicalized sectors of the coalition having former President Mauricio Macri as a reference.
“Our country has been divided for decades, but thanks to this summit, we’ve had 150 mayors from across the country, with diverse political persuasions, all year long working together and making the climate change agenda a priority. It’s a great achievement. It shows that there is another way in Argentina. It shows that we are capable of dialogue, that we can work together. It’s a new Argentina,” said Rodríguez Larreta in the tone of the vote. Rodríguez Larreta’s intention is to represent a center option that neutralizes the polarization that is fracturing Argentine politics. At one end stands Macri; in the other the left Cristina Kirchner, today Vice-President.
The Mayor of Buenos Aires asked to remove some prejudices about protecting the environment, such as thinking that doing so is incompatible with economic development or believing that someone will benefit from the consequences of climate change, such as droughts, floods and fires can be spared.
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,” criticized Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, a leader of the NGO Fridays for Future in Uganda, on the stage of the Buenos Aires Convention Center. Nakabuye has urged world leaders to stop promising and act.
Other activists have refused to attend the event, and parallel protests and actions have been organized across the city. “In the C40 there is no talk of living green vegetation or absorbent soil, while the pitches are cemented, filled with plastic and the few remaining trees destroyed,” said María Angélica di Giacomo, head of the Argentine organization Enough to Mutilate Our Trees , at a protest on Tuesday behind the Casa Rosada.
“The stations, the sub-viaducts and the riverfront are our last chances to increase absorbing land per capita, and we’re losing them to a few because of real estate projects,” Di Giacomo added.
The C40 Global Mayors Summit will take place in Buenos Aires until Friday. Among the participants, in addition to the leaders mentioned above, are the mayors of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and of Bogotá, Claudia López; and Miami Mayors Francis Suárez and Sao Paulo Mayors Ricardo Nunes.