The Environment Chronicle

Notable environmental events between 2016 and 2016 Deselect

  1. The twenty-second session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 22) and the twelfth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 12) was held in Bab Ighli, Marrakech, Morocco from 7-18 November 2016.

  2. On 20 July 2016 the Global Restoration Council was launched in Bonn on the invitation of Federal Ministry for the Environment. The council brings together luminaries from the fields of politics, civil society and business. It was the council's first official meeting. The Global Restoration Council met on 20 and 21 July in Bad Godesberg, a neighbourhood in Bonn. The council is made up of internationally active, respected individuals well-known to the public. The former Swedish prime minister Göran Persson, the human rights and climate activist Bianca Jagger, and the representative of the African Green Belt Initiative Wanjira Mathai are among the members. The council will work together with the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR) to support the achievement of international targets for the restoration of destroyed forestland.

  3. During its meeting in in Istanbul, Turkey, from 10 to 17 July 2016, the World Heritage Committee inscribed 21 sites on the World Heritage List: 12 cultural sites, six natural and three “mixed” sites that are both natural and cultural. The World Heritage List now numbers 1052 sites in 165 countries.

  4. From 3 to 5 July 2016, Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks and Moroccan Foreign Minister and President of the next climate conference (COP 22) in Marrakesh, Salaheddine Mezouar, hosted the seventh Petersberg Climate Dialogue. 35 ministers from regions across the globe have been invited to participate. After the historical success of the Paris summit last December, this year's Climate Dialogue focused on promoting an ambitious and swift implementation of the Paris Agreement. There was consensus at the talks that the climate targets laid down in Paris must be implemented as quickly as possible in concrete policies. A further focus of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue was exploiting synergies to step up implementation of the Paris Agreement. At the talks, Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks and Federal Development Minister Gerd Müller jointly presented a global partnership to support the implementation of nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Participants in the Climate Dialogue also hope to inject futher impetus by shifting global finance flows to be consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate resilient development, one of the goals of the Paris Agreement.