![]() “We have to make sure we do it right the first time.” (Reporting by Laurie Goering editing by Alex Whiting: Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, trafficking and property rights. With climate change impacts worsening fast and few years left to bring about a wholesale shift to clean energy, “there’s no time for trial and error”, she said. “I’m going to push as hard as I can to get all or most of my targets embedded in this city so no one can change them again, so they can just come in and build on that,” she said. To change that, the world’s mayors should work together “to say to these multilateral bodies that we want a say in how the resources are distributed”, she said.ĭe Lille’s term as mayor ends in 2021 – one reason her renewable energy goal is set for 2020. International funding to help developing countries address climate change is only slowly getting flowing and what arrives at the national government level does not always trickle down to cities, she said. One thing she wishes she had, however, is more money. Then it’s much easier – you have leadership at all levels bought into the new way of doing things.” But with good leadership, “later on, you find that people have now bought into the idea and understand the benefit of what we are achieving. ![]() “In government, things don’t just happen by wishing,” she said. ![]() As women, we have to represent those voices of other women”.ĭe Lille said that she’s seen little pushback on her clean energy agenda at home and that, like many mayors, she spends her time focusing on “implementation, implementation, implementation”. But when it comes to climate change, “you always see it is girls and mothers who are disproportionately affected. In two years, the number of women in charge of large cities leading on climate action has risen from four to 16, according to the C40 Cities network of more than 80 cities committed to addressing climate change, which is organising a conference for women leaders in New York this month.ĭe Lille said that women leaders are far from “the panacea for all of our problems”. And to recharge the batteries we’re also going to use solar energy.”Īround the world, cities are increasingly at the forefront of action to curb climate change – and a growing number, from Cape Town to Paris to Sydney, are now run by women. “Our maintenance budget will be cut by 60 percent, as they’re very easy to maintain. “They’re going to save us a lot of money,” said de Lille, 66, a former trade union leader and longtime South African politician. electric car manufacturer Tesla has indicated it intends to open its first Africa office in Cape Town, de Lille said, and a Chinese manufacturer of solar-powered electric buses will come in next year.Ĭape Town has an order in for 10 of the buses, the first of which will hit the streets later this year, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview. Since taking charge of South Africa’s second biggest city in 2011, her administration has overseen the installation of LED streetlights on 25,000 roads, retrofitted 32 city buildings to make them more energy efficient and installed 46,000 roof-top solar water heaters.Ī big plot of land in the city has been set aside for green companies that want to move in and build solar panels, wind turbines or other forms of clean tech.Īlready U.S. LONDON, March 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - National leaders may have been the ones to sign the Paris Agreement to combat climate change – but when it comes to putting the deal into effect, “it is cities that drive most of the change”, says Cape Town’s mayor Patricia de Lille.
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