Climate champions launch Global Action Agenda in Morocco

Morocco and France's global climate champions, Hakima El Haite and Laurence Tubiana, launched the Global Climate Action Agenda here on Tuesday.

As a successor to the Lima-Paris Action Agenda in 2013, the Global Action Agenda allows non-governmental players, such as civil society organizations, private companies, cities, regions and investors, and their initiatives to play a bigger role.

In Marrakech, the agenda is putting together a program of nine theme days consisting of forests, water, industry and business, resilience in cities, buildings, energy, transport, oceans and agriculture.

For each theme, debates will be held to show initiatives already launched by the non-governmental sector, identify challenges and solutions, and make political recommendations.

In addition, the two champions will organize a high-level event on Nov. 17 to showcase the most transformative initiatives and best-in-class stories across the globe.

More than 150 people, including Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Albert II, Prince of Monaco and Bounnhang Vorachith, President of Laos, will speak at the events.

"We need everybody. No government, no city can act alone. Our message today is as follows: we have to act now. We can't wait until 2020," said Laurence Tubiana at the launch of the Global Action Agenda.

On her part, Hakima El Haite celebrated "the extraordinary mobilization of civil society" within the framework of the agenda.

More than 12,500 actions have so far been registered on the Non-State Actors Zone for Climate Action platform, with more than 2,500 from cities and about 2,100 from companies. Endit