The Ministry of Ecological Transition of the Government of the Canary Islands has launched the period of public consultation of the draft Canary Islands Climate Action Plan, one of the fundamental management tools of the Climate Change and Energy Transition Law of the islands approved at the end of 2022.
In the maps included in the draft, it can be seen how Lanzarote is the island that has the highest temperatures in the archipelago, since a large part of its territory exceeds 25 degrees Celsius more than 150 days a year, which makes the island more vulnerable to the rise in temperatures generated by climate change.
The regional minister responsible for the Area, José Antonio Valbuena, detailed that the period for submitting contributions began this week and will last until April 11 and encouraged “the population in general and the Canary Islands entities to participate in this process to enrich this document that is so important for the future of the archipelago.”
The Canary Islands Climate Action Plan contains the set of actions aimed at achieving the objectives set in the Canary Islands Climate Action Strategy on time. It also includes the set of actions aimed at minimizing or absorbing the impacts, risks and vulnerabilities, real and potential, identified in the strategy.
In order to achieve these objectives on time, its content is divided into an informative and diagnostic part and a regulatory part. The first includes the elaboration of the present and future climate scenarios of the archipelago, the identification and evaluation of the impacts and foreseeable risks based on these scenarios and the evaluation of the vulnerability of natural resources, the territory and the population to the impacts and risks identified.
In the regulatory section, the specific objectives of mitigation, adaptation and resilience to be achieved are covered; the specific measures of mitigation and adaptation to the impacts and risks detected; the establishment of a system of indicators that facilitates the monitoring of the achievement of the objectives through the measures adopted; and the mechanisms to guarantee governance and temporary measures of insular or municipal competence that proceed in accordance with the first additional provision of this law.
The Canary Islands Climate Action Plan will have a validity of ten years from its publication, and may be extended by the Government of the Canary Islands. Without prejudice to the foregoing, said plan may be reviewed every five years to update the scenarios and objectives.
