Teresa Ribera elevates the fight against climate change to the vice presidency

Teresa Ribera will be Vice President for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge. With this new position, Sánchez fulfills the commitment to give ministerial rank (in fact it places him in a vice presidency) to demographic matters.

In this way, the president points out as a priority of the new Government the policies with which it will face the challenges of the emptied Spain. Thus, the Executive undertakes to extend all public services to rural areas, improve existing infrastructures and build new communication infrastructures in order to guarantee accessibility and territorial connectivity.

Measures to reverse depopulation also include a National Rural Development Plan, facilitating generational renewal in farms, especially addressing the problem of access to land for youth, and creating a line of support for women entrepreneurs in rural areas.

The climate emergency as a priority

At a time when the climate emergency worries, and a lot, Teresa Ribera puts herself at the head of a vice presidency that has come by surprise. Not even Unidas Podemos or Pablo Iglesias knew the intention of the president of the Government to create this position.

Sánchez already made it clear in his investiture speech that the fight against climate change will be a priority of the new Executive. The challenge is to turn Spain into a spearhead in this area. Thus, as stated in the programmatic agreement signed by the PSOE and Unidas Podemos, a Law on Climate Change and Energy Transition will be approved. The goal will be to achieve 100% renewable electricity generation by 2050, and between 85% and 95% by 2040.

Sánchez has pledged to launch a Just Transition Institute to help communities affected by the closure of mining basins and nuclear power plants.

There’s more. Among the environmental commitments of the new Executive is the elaboration of a Circular Economy strategy, with the aim of reaching “zero waste” by 2050, and the approval of a Law on Single-Use Plastics.

Likewise, from the vice presidency led by Ribera, a National Plan for water purification, sanitation, efficiency, saving and reuse will be promoted, consecrating, among other things, access to water “as a human right and not as a commercial good,” according to Sánchez in Congress. An ecological roadmap that is completed with an Animal Welfare Law.

Ribera will also have to deal with the ‘water war’ in relation to the Tajo-Segura Transfer, from Castilla-La Mancha to Levante or the serious pollution suffered by the Mar Menor.

For this important work, the vice president has the support of the main environmental organizations such as Ecologists in Action, WWF or SEO/BirdLife. “It is respected by all sectors. She is ideal to make a turn and has enough support from her party to make necessary changes with great support,” they point out from WWF.

Another proof of Pedro Sánchez’s intention to place the ecological transition “in the front line” of the new Government is the creation of the Vice Presidency of Social Rights and Agenda 2030. This position will be occupied by Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Unidas Podemos, who will go to the UN summits as head of climate change strategy and Human Rights.

On the other hand, the Public Treasury has announced that it plans to carry out its first issue of green bonds, those that will be dedicated to financing projects related to the fight against climate change and environmental sustainability, in the second half of this 2020.

Trajectory focused on the environment

Teresa Ribera Rodríguez has a degree in Law. Between 1996 and 2004, he held different positions in the ministries of Public Works, Transport and Environment.

She belongs to the Superior Body of Civil Administrators of the State and has been an adjunct professor of Public Law at the Autonomous University of Madrid. She was Secretary of State for Climate Change from 2008 to 2011. Previously, she held the position of Director General of the Spanish Office of Climate Change in the Ministry of the Environment between 2004 and 2008.

He chairs the Advisory Board of the UnFCCC Momentum for Change Initiative. In January 2017, she was appointed by the Swedish Government as a member of the Board of Directors of the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Ribera is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Climate Advisory Council and SDSN’s Global Leadership Council. He currently collaborates with numerous initiatives of academic and non-governmental institutions.

She has held the position of Minister for the Ecological Transition since June 6, 2018. After being sworn in as president, environmental NGOs have openly asked Sánchez to keep Ribera at the head of this ministry.

Source: La Sexta