Bonn, Germany – From a powerful, women-led climate campaign in Australia to a ground-breaking effort to build climate-smart housing in Mexico, 17 inspiring projects were announced on November 6 as 2013 Lighthouse Activities under the Momentum for Change initiative of the United Nations.
The Australian and Mexican projects were joined by both small, entrepreneurial solutions, such as a project that builds bamboo bicycles in Ghana, as well as large initiatives, such as a massive financing scheme in the Philippines, to unlock resources needed to address climate change. Both the Lighthouse Activities and the Momentum for Change initiative are being spearheaded by the UN Climate Change secretariat to shine a light on the enormous groundswell of activities underway across the globe towards a low-carbon, resource-efficient world.
“The 2013 Lighthouse Activities are true beacons of hope, demonstrating what happens when innovation and passion come together to address the biggest challenge of our time,” UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres said. “There are thousands of examples of people taking action to address climate change all over the world. The Lighthouse Activities highlight some of the most practical, scalable and replicable examples of what people, businesses, governments and industries are doing to tackle climate change, which I hope will inspire others to do the same.”
The 17 Lighthouse Activities are:
Australia: 1 Million Women, building a movement to get one million women to take small steps in their everyday lives to cut emissions
Bangladesh: Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction, a women-centered initiative to address extreme weather conditions in vulnerable communities
China: The China CDM Fund, supporting low-carbon growth and climate resilience through levies on clean development mechanism projects
Ghana: Recycle not a Waste Initiative, empowering street youth to turn recyclable waste into a low-carbon business opportunity
Ghana: Bamboo Bikes Initiative, women leading on climate change by building high-quality bamboo bicycles
Global: Redavia, leasing affordable solar farms without up-front capital investment or long-term obligations
Global: IFAD’s Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme, channeling climate finance to smallholder farmers to build their resilience to climate change
Guatemala: Women Farmers in Guatemala (AIRES), planting trees to sequester carbon and improve farming techniques
India: Pollinate Energy, bringing solar energy to Bangalore’s slums while creating green jobs
India: Community Based Micro Climate Resilience, building flood-resilient and affordable homes
Kenya: The BOMA Project, enabling vulnerable women to adapt to climate change by building small businesses
Liberia: Fostering Innovative Sanitation and Hygiene, providing fecal sludge management services in poor areas
Mexico: ECOCASA, unlocking financing to build low-carbon housing and increase the number of mortgages for low-carbon housing.
Mozambique: Public Private People Partnerships for Climate Compatible Development, empowering the urban poor to design and implement activities to adapt to climate change
Philippines: Sustainable Energy Finance Program, a massive financing scheme to unlock resources needed to address climate change
South Africa: Food and Trees for Africa, fostering women’s leadership through planting trees and raising awareness about climate change
Sudan: Low Smoke Stoves Project, delivering health and economic benefits to the strife-torn region of Darfur, where climate change is a fact of life
The 2013 Lighthouse Activities were selected by a 16-member, international advisory panel as part of the secretariat’s Momentum for Change initiative, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, and operates in partnership with the World Economic Forum.
The 17 activities are being showcased at special events during the COP19/CMP9, UN Climate Change Conference in Warsaw, Poland (11 to 22 November).
Please visit momentum4change.org for more information.
Source: UNFCCC.
About Momentum for Change
Momentum for Change aims to create a public platform that raises awareness about concrete mitigation and adaptation actions being implemented by a wide range of stakeholders at regional, national, or local level.
About the UNFCCC
With 195 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 192 of the UNFCCC Parties. For the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments. In Doha in 2012, the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol adopted an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, which establishes the second commitment period under the Protocol. The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. For more information, visit http://unfccc.int.
