There are now 43 municipal climate partnerships. Nine of them presented their work at the international workshop in Munich from 13 to 15 October. The workshop was attended by around 120 participants, including delegations from the municipalities in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Germany, Ghana, Lesotho, Senegal and South Africa participating in the third phase of the project. On day one the workshop was also by attended by embassy representatives as well as external actors from civil society and the German development cooperation system. Delegates from the other project phases provided an opportunity to share ideas and lessons learned across the phases. The workshop marked the end of the third phase of the project '50 Municipal Climate Partnerships by 2015'.
Sarah Hügler of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development praised the engagement within the climate partnerships: 'Today, municipalities are already seen as leaders of climate change mitigation. (...) The climate partnerships are setting a good example by defining their own joint targets and implementing concrete projects. Climate partnerships see climate change mitigation and adaptation in the context of global developments. Moreover, they do so in dialogue between North and South, and thus raise issues of climate justice.'
Professor Manfred Fischedick, Vice-President of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, delivered a lecture in which he provided an overview of the latest scientific findings on climate change. Professor Fischedick described the direct sharing of lessons learned between municipalities, as practised in the climate partnerships project, as an important factor for successfully expediting the implementation of measures to mitigate climate change: 'We need to step up the pressure so that action is finally taken, and make sure that decisions to mitigate climate change are actually implemented. To do that we need to network municipalities much more intensively. And at the same time we need to enable them to invest in climate change mitigation measures so that they can implement them. Events like this must take place much more frequently in the future.'