Mayors meet in Copenhagen for their own summit

Eighty mayors meet Tuesday and Wednesday in the Danish capital, including  Dutch mayors Ahmed Aboutaleb (Rotterdam), Jozias van Aartsen (Den Haag) en Job Cohen (Amsterdam) from the Netherlands.

Mr. Van Aartsen joined the summit as chair of Eurocities, a network of European middle size and large cities. In the meeting on water management he will share experiences from the seawater heat central, which heats over 800 households in the Hague by extracting heat from sea water.

Job Cohen, mayor of Amsterdam, will be speaking on the cities bicycling policy, the efforts to promote electric powered mobility, and the city heating system. According to Cohen, Amsterdam can be a good example to other cities as “Amsterdam develops outstanding technological innovations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that are interesting for mayors of other cities”.

The mayors climate summit is of importance because cities can be major contributors in fighting climate change. “More than half of the world population lives in cities, which produce about 80 percent of the worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. That is why cities and mayors should be involved in the climate challenge”, thus said a spokesperson of the city of Copenhagen. The summit will host delegations from Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Addis Abeba, Taipei, Sydney and New York.

Three Dutch Provinces participate in the climate summit as well. Governors Erik van Heijningen (South-Holland), Tanja Klip (Drenthe) and Wouter de Jong (Utrecht) present projects during the side event organised by ICLEI, the international association of local authorities striving for sustainable development. The aim of this event  is to bring local and regional interests to the attention of the negotiators at the summit. 

Sources: ANP, Europolitics