The San Fernando City Council has announced through a statement that it has already commissioned the drafting of the Action Plan for Climate and Sustainable Energy (PACES) thus complying with the commitments of the Urban Agenda 2030 and with him Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, with which La Isla -he says- “once again makes reference in the fight against climate change and in the commitment to sustainability by being the first municipality to take this step in the entire province of Cádiz.”
This plan, explains the government team, also links with the Urban Agenda and “with the commitment of San Fernando for the commitment to the planet and compliance with the Sustainable Development Goals“.” It is a useful tool that will allow the town to make a qualitative leap in the way of facing its transformation with short, medium and long term measures, “he says.
San Fernando, the city of Cádiz Bay Natural Park, “thus shows its firm commitment to the fight against climate change,” says the municipal government. “In fact, the island council has even anticipated Andalusian Climate Change Plan of the Junta de Andalucía, which is still pending approval, and which will establish that Andalusian municipalities will have to have their respective PACES drawn up within two years “, he points out.
“The San Fernando Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan is a very important document that will set out the strategies, planning and government actions that will be implemented to fight climate change. Government actions that also they will be transversal and in which all the municipal areas of the City Council will be involved “, has assured the Councilor for Climate Action, Claudia Márquez.
Márquez added that “the document to be drafted will require significant background work and will be a fundamental tool to set the course for the city we want and the environmental actions that we will carry out for the protection and conservation of the environment.”
For practical purposes, he explains, a clear example of the improvements that this document is going to introduce will be the ability to detect in each neighborhood the specific needs that will allow particular and detailed actions in each of these areas (such as the optimal creation of new infrastructures green spaces and improvement of existing parks, the relationship with natural spaces, the planning of shady spaces or the promotion of subsidies or / and guidance from the public for the private implementation of saving and efficiency measures, etc.). “They will be actions that will result in air or water quality and that ultimately seek to substantially improve the quality of life, adapting to the current situation and highlighting the unique environment of San Fernando”, says the mayor .
The Plan will also establish the basic lines to assess greenhouse gas emissions and propose a battery of specific mitigation measures for the municipality, as well as assess future incidents in San Fernando linked to environmental changes and propose adaptation measures to the themselves. This document will also serve as the basis for the preparation of the Municipal Plan against Climate Change that all municipalities must have prepared based on Andalusian regulations.
Márquez has indicated the commitments of the municipalities adhering to the Covenant of Mayors: reduce CO2 emissions by 40% by 2030; increase energy efficiency by 27%; increase the use of energy from renewable sources by 42%; prepare a Reference Emissions Inventory (IER) and carry out an assessment of risks and vulnerabilities derived from climate change.
“All these actions – Claudia Márquez has stated – will be collected in the PACES of San Fernando.”
“According to the IPCC report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) of 2019, governments have a decade to act and reverse the situation that currently leads us to generate climate changes incompatible with the known lifestyle. Otherwise, there are risks of generating climate scenarios on which experts cannot project, scenarios incompatible with human life. And the challenge is that the global temperature does not rise to more than 1.5 degrees Celsius “, said the mayor to warn that” we cannot waste time in our action from the local to fight against this situation and mitigate it as much as possible ” .
The councilor stressed that “these years are decisive to combat climate change and this government team has taken environmental policies very seriously, dedicating specific councils from which we are already shaping the strategies to follow to combat climate change, even before that the regulations themselves oblige us to do so “. And in this sense, he recalled one of EDUSI’s star projects, the creation of an urban park in La Magdalena, “a park with a metropolitan vocation that will become the new green lung of the eastern area of San Fernando.”
The delegate pointed out that the local government, in its participatory vocation, “will involve other social agents and citizens in this whole process.” The councilor, in this sense, recalls that she has dealt with government actions, and specific aspects such as this Action Plan for Climate and Sustainable Energy of San Fernando, at the open work table with Ecologists in Action, as well as in the Local Council of the Environment.
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