Peru and its new Climate Change Law, what's new?
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- Peru is one of the first countries in Latin America to have a law, after Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica.
- It was approved by an absolute majority in Congress.
Peru takes a firm step towards sustainable development. Last Thursday, March 15, the Congress of the Republic approved the Framework Law on Climate Change, making us one of the first countries in the region to have a law. This law seeks to define climate change objectives for the country and will establish specific obligations in the regions and sectors. It will make it possible to define concrete adaptation and mitigation actions, increasing the adaptive capacity of the population and productive ecosystems at the national, regional and local levels.
A great benefit of this law is that it promotes intersectoral work by the Peruvian government, at the vice-ministerial level, with the creation of a high-level commission that will make decisions on what should be the priorities in addressing climate change. It also guarantees the continuity of a sustainable climate change policy transversal to Peru's state policies, by allowing the processes of elaboration and validation of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to continue; currently there is a Multisectoral Technical Group, whose period of existence ends next August.
On the other hand, this law recognizes and guides the participation of non-state actors such as the private sector, for the implementation of mitigation and adaptation measures, and the contributions of indigenous peoples and civil society. It also represents new opportunities to find better ways of doing things. For example, for science, academia or the private sector, in the search for innovation or technologies that allow us to develop more efficiently and generate positive impacts on people and the environment that sustains us.
What about the private sector?
At the moment this law does not contain binding elements for the private sector. What it presents us with are basic management principles that may derive in specific policies. What is expected is to be able to more easily define the objectives as a country and, as they are defined, we will be able to evaluate which specific actions must be carried out in order to achieve these objectives. In Mexico, to give an example, when its climate change law was implemented in 2012, the government adopted new powers and responsibilities, such as the development of a national platform for the registration and regulation of Greenhouse Gases (GHG). From that moment on, new obligations were generated for the private sector; any company emitting more than 25,000 tC02 (GHG) had to report its direct and indirect emissions.
Next steps
The Climate Change Framework Law has already been approved by Congress and is awaiting approval by the Executive Branch. Once the law has been signed and published, it has 120 working days to enter into practice. Then, during its execution, specific actions will be defined that may activate binding elements for the public and private sector, resulting in reporting or regulation mechanisms. In general, this law will facilitate compliance with Peru's international commitments, such as the reduction of emissions of the Paris Agreement, compliance with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and meet the recommendations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development - OECD.
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