Climate Futures Webinar Series: The Future of Mitigation

Mitigation measures are crucial to addressing the climate change crisis. The international community is starting to recognize the urgent need to decarbonize, but progress remains slow, with global greenhouse gas emissions continuing to rise. As the world recovers from COVID-19, there is a risk that governments and companies may revert to carbon-intensive business as usual, rather than developing and deploying policies for a green recovery.

In this second event in DAI’s Climate Futures Webinar series—The Future of Mitigation—our Global Climate Director Donald Lunan explored practical examples of mitigation emerging from projects around the world.

DAI has been supporting communities, businesses, and governments to take affirmative action on climate change for more than a decade. Through our work on mitigation, we have identified five areas that are critical for the successful implementation of climate mitigation interventions: policy, equitable transitions, technology and innovation, knowledge and learning, and finance. The webinar panelists shared their experiences and observations from the field concerning these areas.

Panelists included:

• Nam Nguyen, Mitigation Lead from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Vietnam Urban Energy Security (VUES) project, focuses on technology and innovation. He looked at how the program is spurring energy efficiency innovations as mitigation measures for Vietnam’s megacities.
• Dr. Alexandra Papadopoulou, Climate and Sustainability Energy Expert from the European Union-funded Clima-Med – Acting for Climate in South Mediterranean program. Dr. Papadopoulou focused on policy, particularly concerning how Clima-Med is helping in the preparation of sustainable local actions for 97 South Mediterranean municipalities; including plans and actions for awareness-raising.
• William Fellows, Team Leader for the Morocco Sustainable Energy Financing Facility (MorSEFF), funded by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. William looked at how MorSEFF’s success has led to the first comprehensive framework for financing green economy investments in the retail, banking, and leasing sectors in Morocco.
• Diana Oropeza, Senior Analyst for Product Development for the U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office’s Mexico Clean Energy Project. Diana focused on equitable transitions and discusses the program’s success at developing skills of men, women, businesses, and government to support Mexico’s transition to a low carbon economy.

The presentations were followed by a discussion in response to questions posed by the audience on the future of mitigation.

This is the second event in our Climate Futures webinar series. The first webinar focused was on Adaptation; if you missed it you can find the video of the event here.