UNEP signed an agreement with Mexico to help it create a new center for sustainable development that will serve as the linchpin for a Latin American and the Caribbean network for cooperation on such issues as low-carbon growth, transfer of clean technologies and the green economy.
UNEP also will assist Mexico in creating a long-term national green economy strategy.
12 September 2011: Mexico’s Environment Minister, Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, and the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Executive Director, Achim Steiner, have signed a cooperation agreement on green economy and sustainable low-carbon development. The agreement was signed against the backdrop of the Ministerial Meeting on Short Lived Climate Forcers hosted by Mexico.
Under the agreement, UNEP will assist Mexico in creating and operating the new Mexican Center for Sustainable Development. Mexican President Felipe Calderon first announced his intention to create the Center at 16th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Cancun, Mexico, at the end of 2010. UNEP is to assist the Mexican Center to become a “center of excellence” and to promote it as the linchpin of a Latin American and the Caribbean network for cooperation on such issues as low-carbon growth, transfer of clean technologies and the green economy.
UNEP also will assist Mexico in creating a long-term national green economy strategy with proposals for public policy changes, including regulations to promote public and private investments in clean energy and possible elimination of subsidies found to negatively affect the environment.
Steiner hailed the agreement as demonstrating the Mexican Government’s commitment to shifting to a low-carbon and more equitable economy that promotes the efficient use of resources and avoids loss of biodiversity and natural capital. [UNEP Press Release (in Spanish)]