SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, December 5 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Today, Tuesday, the Ministries of Ecological Transition and Energy and Tourism and Employment of the Government of the Canary Islands presented the projects that lead to the 28th edition of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP28), which is being held in Dubai between November 30 and December 12.
In the case of Ecological Transition, the exhibition of a tool capable of visualizing climate change forecasts oriented to islands will be led, also presenting specific results and predictions about the Canary Islands. Data that has been collected over three years and that has already been partially presented in the presentation of results of the PLANCLIMAC project, led by this Ministry, last November.
For its part, Turismo de Canarias will present the calculator that measures the carbon footprint of tourism companies in the archipelago; a digital tool that the regional Executive offers free of charge to collect data from the sector and that has managed to reduce its CO2 emissions by almost 3% in four years.
The general director of Ecological Transition and Fight against Climate Change, Ángel Montañés, representative who will attend this conference, highlighted the novelty and usefulness of the climate projections tool presented by the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Energy, since “the current global predictions do not value the singularities of islands or archipelagos”.
He also highlighted that with this resource they will be able to explain in detail how climate change is expected to affect these spaces, something that, as he noted, “will be crucial work to become aware of the magnitude of the situation that we will face.” and begin to make decisions adapted to our reality.
Likewise, he noted that this meeting “represents a firm commitment, where synergies will also be created and ideas and information will be shared with other regions that share the characteristics of being islands.”
Montañés also highlighted that this tool “has been developed on the islands by Canarian scientists and talent and has great potential to be exported to other regions, especially taking into account the current interest that exists in this issue.”
For his part, Juan Pedro Díaz, representing the Earth and Atmosphere Observation Group (GOTA) of the University of La Laguna, a team that will also attend COP28, and the main person in charge of developing this tool, explained that have created “a series of high-definition projections for two different periods throughout the 21st century and for two different climate change scenarios.”
Likewise, he detailed some of its possible uses, pointing out that realities such as the increase in temperatures, the decrease in precipitation, the decrease in thermal comfort or predictions about the increase in unfavorable conditions for fires can be visualized. Finally, he also pointed out that the details of this data can be consulted both on the open data portal of the Territorial Information System of the Canary Islands (SITCAN) and on the website of the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
CARBON FOOTPRINT CALCULATOR.
In the case of the Ministry of Tourism and Employment, the general director of Tourism Planning, Training and Promotion, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, announced that the Canary Islands will present at the Dubai Summit the calculator that measures the carbon footprint of tourism companies in the archipelago.
This is a digital tool that the regional Executive offers free of charge to collect data from the sector, which has managed to reduce its CO2 emissions by almost 3% in four years.
Rodríguez recalled that the Canary Islands “was the first destination in Spain to have a Climate Action Master Plan, which demonstrates the firm commitment to moving towards a more sustainable tourism model.” Likewise, he explained that within this Canary Islands strategy, different instruments have been launched to lead the decarbonization of the sector, such as the new Sustainability Office, whose technicians offer free comprehensive advice to tourism companies that want to reduce their emissions.