Quick Tips for integrating the environment and climate change in development cooperation sectors
date: 05/03/2021
The 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement call for a fundamental rethinking of development models. The European Union has long been committed to tackling climate and environment-related challenges and has made this a priority through the European Green Deal.
As the EU gears up to support partner countries through external assistance in the next programming period (2021-2027) and with ongoing support for the implementation of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA, formerly DG DEVCO) has designed a series of ‘Quick tips’ publications to actively promote effective and ambitious climate and environment integration across a number of key sectors.
Every sector has the potential to contribute simultaneously to several Sustainable Development Goals. Such contributions also help deliver action on targets related to climate change adaptation and mitigation, curbing pollution, improving public health, conserving ecosystems and biodiversity and addressing land degradation. The Green Deal embraces this approach and seeks to rally all stakeholders around a shared responsibility and ensure that we all do our part. Moreover, in fighting today’s challenges, such as, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU is convinced that going green is the way to ensure sustainable recovery and to build back better.
Along these lines, the ‘Quick tips’ provide practical ideas and guidance to colleagues in the European Commission headquarters, EU Delegations and partner country institutions to maximise opportunities for sustainability and address environmental and climate-related risks in the following sectors: sustainable energy, transport and mobility, education, infrastructure, food and agriculture, private sector development and trade, and digitalisation.
‘Quick tips’ on activities that qualify for Rio markers
Each ‘Quick tips’ publication also contains a guidance note to help track the financial contributions of development cooperation actions towards the objectives of the United Nations Rio Conventions: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification; in line with the methodology adopted by the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC).
In adhering to these Conventions, the EU committed to spend at least 20 % of its budget for 2014-2020 on climate related actions. As regards biodiversity, in 2012, the EU endorsed the Hyderabad objective to ‘double total biodiversity-related international financial resource flows to developing countries’ by 2015 and up to 2020 – against a baseline value of EUR 167 million per year. Thus far, the EU is on track, but more remains to be done in order to safeguard the future.
These commitments are expected to be stepped up under the forthcoming EU Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (e.g. by increasing financial flows to at least 25 % for climate action), which will set the ambitions for the 2021-2027 period.
Click on the link below to download all the ‘Quick tips’ publications and their associated documents on activities that qualify for Rio markers in the different sectors:
For further guidance on greening EU cooperation and on how to implement the Green Deal, contact:
Environment and Climate Change Mainstreaming Facility
E: INTPA-F2-F1-MAINSTREAMING@ec.europa.eu | NEAR-GREENING-FACILITY@ec.europa.eu