The second “Climate Summit of the Americas” is taking place this week in Guadalajara, Mexico.
The summit involves input from representatives from countries from North, Central, and South America, and this time with some observer nations from Southeast Asia.
Tim Gray is the executive director of the non-governmental environmental advocacy and legal action organization, Environmental Defence-Canada. I reached him at the summit in Mexico
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The difference between this summit, and something like the international climate summits, is that there are government officials not just at the national level, but it is primarily a meeting of provincial, state and big city government leaders and officials.
An important difference as well is that while national leaders make promises on climate issues, these can sometimes be difficult to implement at a national level, and/or other priorities push the climate promises into the background.
Tim Gray points out that in many cases it is these ‘subnational’ governments, i.e. provinces, states, cities, that end up implementing their own climate programmes and objectives much more quickly.
One such deal he says, is that signed among the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and Mexico regarding creation of a cap-and-trade carbon market.
The summit wraps up later today.
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