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Germany and ECLAC to Cooperate to Strengthen the Sustainable Management of Mining Resources in the Andean Region

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6 February 2017|Press Release

At a meeting held today, the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Chile, Rolf Schulze, and the regional organization’s Executive Secretary, Alicia Bárcena, also agreed to allocate additional resources to a programme to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda in the region.

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The Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Chile, Rolf Schulze, and the Executive Secretary of the ECLAC, Alicia Bárcena, during a meeting at the headquarters of the German mission in Santiago, Chile.
The Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Chile, Rolf Schulze, and the Executive Secretary of the ECLAC, Alicia Bárcena, during a meeting at the headquarters of the German mission in Santiago, Chile.
Photo: Carlos Vera/ECLAC.

The Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) are to bolster their strategic cooperation relationship by providing additional resources to strengthen a programme for supporting the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development across the region and to continue with a project for the sustainable management of mining resources in the Andean countries.

The announcement was made today by the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Chile, Rolf Schulze, and the Regional Commission’s Executive Secretary, Alicia Bárcena, during an exchange of verbal notes that took place at the headquarters of the German mission in Santiago, Chile. “The role of Latin America and the Caribbean in the global context is of increasing importance. The German Government places great weight on cooperation with those countries, and ECLAC is a strategic partner in that task,” the Ambassador said.

“Through this partnership, ECLAC takes advantage of Germany’s know-how in different areas and, at the same time, Germany complements its bilateral projects with various Latin American countries through this cooperation with ECLAC to influence dialogue and joint learning about policies and strategies that are of relevance to the region’s economic, social and environmental development,” stated Alicia Bárcena in turn.

Germany joined ECLAC as a full member in 2005, which marked the beginning of a strategic partnership with a programmatic and regional perspective characterized by the search for complementarities and topics of common interest as an expression of the relevance this country attaches to Latin America and the Caribbean in its political, cultural and economic projection.

The project “Regional cooperation for the sustainable management of mining resources in the Andean countries,” to be executed over a three-year period in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, includes activities with mining and environmental authorities and representatives of the private sector and civil society that will allow exchanges of experiences and the promotion of public-private initiatives in that area.

The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) charged the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) and the organization Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) with the implementation of this project, in which ECLAC serves as the regional counterpart.

For this undertaking, the German Government will provide human and material resources and, if necessary, a financial contribution of up to 4.5 million euros, to be managed by the BGR and GIZ. Of that amount, up to 1,125,000 euros may be made available to ECLAC to cover the activities it is to carry out as part of this programme.

This initiative is the continuation of a programme for sustainable mining in the Andean region in which the BGR, GIZ and ECLAC were involved and which concluded in September 2016.

In today’s exchange of verbal notes, it was also agreed that Germany will contribute an additional one million euros to help fund the joint cooperation programme for the 2016-2018 period. With this, the total budget available will rise to 5 million euros, with ECLAC responsible for the allocation of 3.2 million of that total.

The goal of this two-year programme, which is styled “Support for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean” and is to be carried out by GIZ on instructions from the BMZ, is to help the region’s countries formulate public policies for integrating the proposals of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into their national and sectoral development plans and produce progress monitoring indicators.

This programme’s achievements to date include its advocacy for the implementation of green fiscal policies in several of the region’s countries, such as Ecuador, Guatemala and Colombia, the assistance given to several governments in the design of inclusive social protection policies, and the design of strategies for tackling climate change in Chile and Peru and for protecting native forests in Brazil.

At the event, Alicia Bárcena urged the German authorities to attend the first meeting of the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development, which is to take place on 26 to 28 April in Mexico City. Likewise, Rolf Schulze invited the ECLAC Executive Secretary to attend a meeting of the German Ambassadors accredited to the nations of Latin America that is to be held in Colombia on 23 May.