What a successful COP29 Azerbaijan! Thank you to all the speakers involved in spotlighting the Equinox Process and the Knowledge Hub on Sea Level Rise’s European Assessment Report on the global climate stage.
Three side events in the Blue Zone, in Baku, gave leading climate policymakers, professionals and decision makers the opportunity to hear directly from European climate experts.
The discussions were informed by key 2024 events held in collaboration by JPI Climate, JPI Oceans and supported by the MAGICA Climate project:
- Equinox Summit 2
- Climate Neutrality Forum
- Publication & launch of the Knowledge Hub on Sea Level Rise’s European Assessment Report on the global climate stage
Frank McGovern is Vice-Chair of JPI Climate, Chief Climate Scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Ireland, and leader of the Equinox Process. He moderated the first COP29 side event, ‘Accelerating Climate Action Now: the Equinox Process and its contributions’, held on November 18th in the Spanish Pavilion.
The other speakers were:
- Bram Maasakkers, Senior Scientist at SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research
- Pierpaolo Campostrini, MD of CORILA (Consortium for coordination of research activities concerning the Venice lagoon system)
- Maria Jose Sanz, Scientific Director of the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3)
- Natasha Lutz, Co-Data Lead at Net Zero Tracker Data, University of Oxford.
The debate put the spotlight on the science-to-policy Equinox Process and its pivotal contributions to climate action in Europe with updates on the Climate Neutrality Forum, covering key messages on land use, methane action, and more. It also shared key messages from the recently published Assessment Report of the Knowledge Hub on Sea-Level Rise with the packed audience.
On November 20th the Italian Pavilion hosted a talk by Pierpaolo, a co-author of the Sea Level Rise Assessment Report, titled ‘The paradigm of Venice, valuable lessons for sea level rise and disaster risk reduction’.
Germany’s Pavilion hosted us in a live streamed event on November 21st, ‘Coastal ecosystems in focus for climate and biodiversity protection’, organised by the German Advisory Council for Climate Change (WBGU), CDRmare and DLR Projekttrager. Hans Otto Portner is a member of the WBGU and Co-Chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change during the 6th IPCC-Assessment Cycle (2015-2023). He spoke about the importance of reducing and updating the uncertainties of Sea Level Rise projection and the potential impacts on coastal communities in Europe, as covered in JPI Oceans’ and JPI Climate’s Knowledge Hub on Sea Level Rise’s European Assessment Report. He reiterated to the audience the report’s conclusion that more regular updates are needed.
