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Civil Society Call: Energy for All 2030
(Bonn, 10.10.2011) Civil society organisations from Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa have sent in Octobre 2011 a call to EU leaders to commit to eradicating energy poverty and achieving universal energy access by 2030. The call focuses particularly on Sub-Saharan Africa, as the region most acutely affected. The call asks the EU to deliver the quantity and quality of EU funding to make this a reality.
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World Bank Group and International Energy Development
(Bonn/Stuttgart, 25.02.2011) Church Development Service and Bread for the World, two development agencies of the protestant churches in Germany, commissioned a study in order to get a comprehensive and critical overview about the energy lending policies and portfolio of the World Bank Group and its implication for sustainable development, poverty reduction and climate change. The study was accomplished by Heike Mainhardt-Gibbs, USA, an expert on World Bank Group strategies and policies. The study was published in 2011 and contains 60 pages plus several annexes.
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Timid hope at end of climate negotiations in Cancun
(Cancún, 13.12.10) The Cancun Agreement, adopted by the vast majority of parties at the United Nations climate change conference (COP16) in the early morning hours of 11 December, gives guarded hope to churches and civil society groups who had called for decisive action by the world's governments. In an improvement on the process that led to the much-criticized Copenhagen Accord last year, the president of the conference managed to keep the climate negotiations in the multilateral track and make some, although insufficient, steps forward.
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Faith communities stress moral dimension of climate change
(Cancún, 09.12.10) Faith communities came together to address climate change, poverty and sustainable development in a side event jointly organized by Caritas Internationalis, ACT Alliance and the World Council of Churches (WCC) at the Cancun climate summit on 7 December.
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Issuance of Toxic Carbon Credits Undermines Credibility of UNFCCC Process
(Cancún, 08.12.2010) An open letter sent by a broad coalition of green groups including CDM Watch, Greenpeace and WWF to the COP Presidency calls to rescind millions of fake HFC-23 CDM credits. Environmentalists claim that the issuance of those credits has put a black mark on the environmental integrity of the CDM and prompted speculation that the UNFCCC process has been hijacked by special interests.
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Further notices

Renewable Energy for Afrika? IRENA and the Africa-EU Energy Partnership


(Bonn, 3 May 2010) An international conference on new dynamics for renewable energies in Africa, organized by VENRO, Forum Environment and Development and the Church Development Service, will be held in June in Berlin. The event will focus on how to increase and improve involvement of civil society organisations.

With the founding of the International Agency for Renewable Energies (IRENA) early in 2009 and the Africa-EU Energy Partnership (AEEP) resolved in Lisbon in 2007, new instruments have been created to promote Renewable Energies in Africa. There, access to affordable, decentralised and sustainable energy supply is key to poverty alleviation, rural development and achieving the Millennium Development Goals, but also to escaping the threat of the debt trap owing to ever more expensive imports of fossil energy.

IRENA and AEEP differ regarding their role. The Africa-EU Energy Partnership has opted chiefly for political dialogue, while IRENA focuses on imparting specialist know-how via policy consulting and experts’ network.Involving civil society plays an important role in the Africa-EU Partnership.

Nevertheless, hardly any success has been achieved in a substantial involvement of NGO experts, especially on the part of Africa. In IRENA, civil society has had no role to play so far.With this VENRO, Forum Environment and Development and the Church Development Service intend to make a contribution to how both institutions can promote Africa’s sustainable energy supply, complementing each other. Also at the forefront is the issue of how civil society organisations from Africa and Europe can become more involved.

Date and venue: Monday, 14 June 2010, Dietrich Bonhoeffer haus, Berlin
Conference language: english
Registration until Monday, 7 June 2010 per E-Mail: evitkepsrep.sakirfa@gro.ornev

Further information:

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