Dominican Republic.-The “Business Articulation Platform for Climate Action” (PAEAC) held two meetings to raise awareness and exchange experiences regarding compensation for greenhouse gas emissions and economic mechanisms, through which more than fifty impacted companies operate in the national territory.
These meetings strengthened the business sector so that they could link their business strategies to the actions required to measure, reduce, and offset their greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to fulfilling the commitments established in the National Determined Contribution (NDC), the Paris Agreement, and complementary instruments.
The first meeting had as a central element the conference ¨General overview of GHG compensation mechanisms applicable to the Dominican Republic¨ by the Colombian expert Mauricio Rodríguez.
Also, within the framework of the event, a panel was held on public and private experiences regarding carbon offsetting in the Dominican Republic, which was made up of Carlos Birbuet, director of LNG Organization, AES Dominicana; Karla Santana, EGE Haina Development Coordinator; Nathalie Flores, director of Adaptation and Mitigation of Climate Change of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources and the consultant Nelly Cuello.
From this first meeting, the main results were oriented to the need for technical assistance so that companies can design and implement mitigation or compensation actions for greenhouse gas emissions, the importance of choosing compensation instruments that bet on integrity and transparency, as well as maintaining alliances with the government to harmonize the national processes of accounting, reporting, and verification of emissions.
The second event focused on economic opportunities for the decarbonization path, with a keynote speech by Fernando Mora, coordinator of the Alianza para la Acción Climática de Costa Rica, a member organization of ArticulLAC. Mr. Mora explained the Costa Rican experience in creating capacities, generating climate action, and involving public-private alliances to establish and develop incentives for mitigating and compensating emissions. As well as for those initiatives that generate co-benefits in adaptation.
This presentation was followed by a panel of experts who presented the success stories of their initiatives. They were Ileana Rojas from Gerdau Metaldom; Arturo Bisonó from the Supérate Program; Roberto Rubio from the IFC-World Bank; Vinicio Subero from Barceló, and, as a public initiative, César Abrill from the REDD+ Project.
In the second meeting, the main results aimed to identify a catalog of incentives by type to motivate climate action in business. From the panel of experiences of the initiatives, the importance of having multiple levels of incentives by categories was evidenced, such as knowledge instruments, participation in the design of public policies, governance and dissemination of climate actions, financing, and recognition, among others.
At the close of this event, Mr. Elías Dinzey, general manager of Fundación Popular, and Mrs. María Alicia Urbaneja, executive director of ECORED, encouraged those present to continue participating in these spaces and to take advantage of the resources available on the website: www.empresassosteniblesrd .org, especially the ¨RDucetuhuella¨ tool.
Business Articulation is a joint initiative between the Popular Foundation, ECORED, CONEP, and UNDP, supported by the National Council for Climate Change and Clean Development Mechanism and the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. It is dedicated to accelerating private-sector climate action.
