I. Background and Objective

The Glasgow work programme on ACE encourages Parties “to designate, assign responsibilities to, and provide support, including technical and financial support, and access to information and materials to national Action for Climate Empowerment focal points” (Decisions 18/CP.26, para. 8 and 22/CMA.3, para. 8), also known as national ACE focal points. The responsibilities of national ACE focal points “could include identifying areas for possible international cooperation and opportunities for strengthening synergies with action under other conventions, and coordinating the preparation of the chapter on ACE in national communications, ensuring that relevant contact information, including weblinks, is provided therein.”

The informal virtual networking meeting responds to the request to the secretariat to support “Increased peer-to-peer exchange among national ACE focal points about ACE activities carried out at the national level through, inter alia, the ACE Dialogues, the regional climate weeks and informal virtual networking meetings organized by the secretariat.” (Action Plan of the Glasgow work programme on ACE Activity B.2, priority area coordinated action)

The informal virtual networking meeting was supported by the Action for Climate Empowerment Hub (ACE Hub). The ACE Hub is a three-year collaboration between the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Action and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and UN Climate Change. The overarching goal of the project is to foster the implementation of ACE, as well as to enhance the cooperation between national governments, non-Party stakeholders and organizations, experts and companies within and outside NRW in addressing climate change.

II. Description

The informal virtual networking meeting was organized as an online event repeated in two, one-hour sessions with simultaneous interpretation in French and Spanish for the first and second sessions respectively. 

Acknowledging the importance of linkages between activities undertaken to support ACE, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDG 4 which focuses on Quality Education, the meeting aimed at introducing the Greening Education Partnership (GEP) to national ACE focal points. Launched during the 2022 Transforming Education Summit, the GEP is a global initiative aimed at delivering strong, coordinated and comprehensive collaboration to advance and improve the implementation of climate change education by both party and non-party stakeholders through four action areas of transformative education: Greening Schools, Greening curriculum, Greening Teacher Training and Education Systems’ capacities and Greening communities. In order to ensure coherence and synergies in promoting climate change education at the national level, there is a need to ensure coordination between the work of national ACE focal points, who are normally with the ministries responsible for climate change, and the ministries responsible for education. In this regard, the meeting provided an opportunity for national ACE focal points to learn more about GEP and fostered peer-to-peer exchange among national ACE focal points about how such institutional arrangements at the national level can be set up and made to work effectively towards the achievement of a common goal.  

III. Agenda