Environment: Official launch of Tunisian-Swiss cooperation to implement the Paris Agreement
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Tunis: Tunisian-Swiss cooperation to implement the Paris Climate Agreement and combat climate change was officially launched on Monday during a ceremony organised by the Ministry of Environment at the Tunis International Centre for Environmental Technologies (CITET).
It is part of the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement signed between Tunisia and Switzerland in December 2023. That bilateral agreement aims to raise the level of ambition of the two countries’ respective climate change commitments and constitutes the legal basis for taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the cooperative approaches between countries, as defined in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
This cooperation will accelerate the implementation of the two countries’ respective Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and promote green investments in Tunisia.
While stressing the importance of such cooperation, Minister of Environment Leila Chikhaoui pointed out that Tunisia’s updated NDC aims to reduce its carbon inten
sity by 45% by 2030 compared to 2010.
She also noted that Tunisia is one of the Mediterranean countries most affected by polluting emissions, although it only contributes 0.07%.
For his part, Swiss ambassador to Tunisia, Josef Renggli, underlined his country’s willingness to invest in green projects in Tunisia in order to limit the impact of CO2 emissions and support efforts to combat climate change.
The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international agreement on climate change. It was adopted by 196 parties at COP 21, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, on December 12, 2015. It entered into force on November 4, 2016.
Its overall objective is to ‘hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels’ and to ‘pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.’
Article 6 of the agreement allows countries to enter into ‘voluntary cooperation’ with other countries to achieve their respective national climat
e goals.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse