R20 Regions of Climate Action

R20 Regions of Climate Action
founding	2010
founder	Arnold Schwarzenegger
Seat	Geneva (headquarters), Santa Monica , Beijing , Rio de Janeiro and Oran
main emphasis	Supporting sub-national governments in planning and implementing sustainable energy and climate protection projects
Chair	Magnus Berntsson (President)
Managing directors	Christophe Nuttall
Website	regions20.org

R20 Regions of Climate Action is a non-governmental (NGO) and non-profit organization that was founded in 2010 by Arnold Schwarzenegger in cooperation with the United Nations .

overview

The initiative has set itself the goal of starting climate protection where a lot is already happening: in the regions, with local projects, in urban areas or with companies. R20, which are based in Geneva, want to support states, regions and initiatives around the world in developing their projects and best practice examples and making them accessible to a broader public.

Board

R20 founder Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks at the R20 AUSTRIAN WORLD SUMMIT 2017

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the founder of the organization, Michèle Sabban is the current president, the Frenchman Christophe Nuttall is the managing director and the American Terry Tamminen is strategic advisor to the board. A board of directors monitors the foundation's activities and bundles the investments here together with the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

organization

There are now 25 members and 43 partners as well as 2 national governments in the R20 initiative. As a result, a total of 560 sub-national and regional governments are already networked with one another worldwide. The R20 initiative aims to strengthen regions economically through new "green jobs" and at the same time to improve the environment by reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gases. These local and regional approaches should help to achieve the common global goals for climate protection and the promotion of a green economy.

Projects

The bottom-up philosophy makes it possible to develop and implement regionally adapted projects with the know-how of experts and companies of the R20 initiative. These can then be carried out in the long term by the responsible decision-makers on site. Priority projects deal with environmentally friendly public transport, energy-efficient construction standards, LED street lighting, renewable energies on a small scale, and the use of waste and sewage sludge for energy generation. To implement these projects, R20 offers its members the following programs: Regions in action , Technologies in action and Finance in action . Best-practice experiences are exchanged, technical training, advice and communication measures are carried out.

In association with the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, 100 projects with a volume of 2.5 billion US dollars are now to be tackled worldwide.

On September 26, 2017, on the initiative of the German board member Andreas Mattner, the Hamburg Senate and the Hamburg Renewable Energy Cluster signed the first agreement in Germany. Essentially, it is about the contractual partners implementing promising and profitable wind energy projects in emerging countries. In addition, Hamburg hopes for the implementation of multi-million dollar foundation projects in the city.

Periodic events

An annual conference is held with the involvement of important decision-makers and multipliers for the exchange of knowledge and experience among R20 members. In March 2012 the first of these conferences, entitled “The Road to Rio: Regions building the Green Economy”, was held in Geneva.

A conference took place in Vienna from January 31 to February 1, 2013 under the motto “Implementing the Sustainable Energy Future”. For two days, high-ranking experts and decision-makers exchanged ideas with the members of R20 about the energy transition , green economy and innovative financing . Speakers at the conference included the Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann , the then EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso , the Director General of the UN special organization UNIDO Kandeh K. Yumkella and R20 founder Arnold Schwarzenegger .

From October 9 to 10, 2014, another conference with the title “Regions - The Key Actors for Energy Turnaround” took place in the Vienna Hofburg . Using best practice examples from model regions, various initiatives and approaches on the topics of sustainable development , the energy transition and climate protection will be shown.

On June 20, 2017, the Austrian World Summit, under the patronage of the Austrian Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen and hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger, celebrated its premiere in the Vienna Hofburg. Important personalities such as Laurent Fabius , the chairman of the Paris Climate Conference 2015 and architect of the Paris Climate Agreement , Patricia Espinosa (Secretary General of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ), Li Yong (Director General of UNIDO ), Erik Solheim (Director of UNEP ), or Maria Neira ( Director of Health and Environment at the World Health Organization, WHO ) attended the event. The Austrian World Summit has been held annually in Vienna since 2017 and is intended to offer a global platform for international best practice examples to achieve the Paris climate goals and the UN sustainability goals. On October 20, 2019, the Austrian World Summit was awarded the European Culture Prize Taurus .

In 2019, the conference was expanded for the first time to include the open-air information and entertainment event Climate Kirtag , during which climate protection activists Greta Thunberg and Conchita Wurst, among others, appealed for more climate protection on Heldenplatz in Vienna.