EIT Climate-KIC Spain joins the Spanish Climate Action Platform as a strategic partner for innovation and entrepreneurship

The last few months have been a frenetic activity for EIT Climate-KIC Spain, especially in terms of collaborations and agreements in which our organisation has been involved. We have already advanced the incorporation in February of our community to Spanish Group for Green Growth (Grupo Español de Crecimiento Verde), an association of more than 30 companies created to promote public-private collaboration to adress environmental challenges and decarbonization of the economy.

From our membership of this Group since then, the opportunity arose to join the Spanish Climate Action Platform last summer as a strategic partner for innovation and entrepreneurship.

The platform is a joint initiative between the Spanish Office for Climate Change (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment, MAPAMA), the Spanish Group for Green Growth, through Ferrovial in its role as Chair of the Group, the Spanish Global Compact Network and ECODES, in its role as executive secretariat of the Community #PorElClima.

The Spanish Climate Action Platform proposes a framework for public-private cooperation promoting the participation and alignment of companies’ climate strategies with government actions to promote compliance with the agreements signed in Paris, while joining efforts to consolidate a more innovative and competitive Spanish economy.

The Platform, within the cooperation framework it proposes, aligns itself with the inclusive spirit that EIT Climate-KIC has on the pyramid of innovation in climate action: to put all the actors together from business, academia, research and public bodies to work together to identify and create innovative solutions to tackle climate change. In this environment, EIT Climate-KIC is set up as a strategic partner for the development of knowledge on innovation and climate entrepreneurship. “There are many opportunities in both, the public and private sectors, to identify and share best practices in mitigation and adaptation and to incorporate innovative solutions,” said Jose-Luis Muñoz, Director of EIT Climate-KIC Spain.

This new Spanish Climate Action Platform was announced on 2017 May by Minister Isabel García Tejerina at Innovate4Climate in Barcelona. The objectives of its creation are to align corporate climate strategies with those of the Government, to share and incorporate best practices on mitigation and adaptation, as well as to measure and integrate the contributions of each party and communicate the results to stakeholders. It also actively contributes to the Marrakech Alliance and serves to identify pioneering solutions, new business models and partnerships to help accelerate climate action and achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

COP23 and the Spanish Climate Action Platform

The initiative has played an important role at COP23 in Bonn, Germany, which ended last Friday 17 November. In this regard, the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment (MAPAMA), Isabel García-Tejerina, had the opportunity to meet there with the Minister of Agriculture, Rural and Maritime Development and National Disaster Management of the Republic of Fiji, who chairs COP 23 and leads the Global Climate Action Agenda.

During the meeting, García-Tejerina highlighted the work being carried out by MAPAMA in the new Spanish Climate Action Platform, which represents Spain’s contribution to the Marrakech Alliance for Global Climate Action and which, she added,”is an initiative of a transversal and innovative nature, which is intended to be included in the next version of the Global Climate Action Yearbook to be an example for the launch of similar initiatives“.

For his part, the Minister of Fiji congratulated Spain for its work on this Platform and for the efforts made in the area of climate action and stressed that his country will work to implement similar initiatives in the future.

The Minister added that “in Spain we are joining forces to gather this global action with concrete initiatives that promote new formulas of cooperation, such as the project One million commitments for the climate or the Community #PorElClima, where the Platform is integrated, a call to all of society to move from commitment to action in the fight against climate change“.

Collaboration between ECODES and EIT Climate-KIC Spain

EIT Climate-KIC Spain has recently signed a collaboration agreement with ECODES, one of the organizations behind the Spanish Climate Action Platform, whose initiative has the role of the Community Executive Secretariat #PorElClima.

ECODES, Ecology and Development Foundation, seeks to achieve a more sustainable model of economic and social development, seeking accomplices in the citizens, civil society organizations, businesses, and public administrations, to accelerate the transition to a green, inclusive and responsible economy, framed in a new governance through innovation, and the creation of bridges and alliances.

ECODES, in spite of being a global organisation, focuses its efforts on Spain and Latin America. In the latter, they work in two complementary areas: the first is on development cooperation actions, mainly in Central America, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, where they also serve as the Secretariat of the Alliance for Water (an initiative that links public administrations, water supply companies, research and opinion centres, social entities and citizens), both in Spain and Central America. And the second line that ECODES works on are those initiatives that help those who want to act for sustainability.

On the other hand, EIT Climate-KIC Spain contributes in this collaboration agreement its knowledge and experience in innovation, entrepreneurship and technological monitoring, by identifying research groups and accelerating start-ups linked to climate action.