The two northern cities are the only Portuguese towns to appear on the “A List” created by the CDP, an international organization funded by the European Union that evaluates the environmental work of companies, cities, states and regions.
Last year, these two cities, as well as gueda, were already marked in Aveiro, which this year is not mentioned, while in 2019 the Portuguese “class A” cities are Lisbon, Sintra and Guimarães.
According to the statement sent by the CDP, 95 selected cities “have received the utmost transparency and ambitious action to mitigate or adapt to climate change.”
“To secure a grade of A, a city must publicly disclose its environmental data and have a citywide emission inventory, have an ambitious emissions reduction goal and a future renewable energy target, and have published a climate action plan,” the organization explains.
To get a good rating, you still need to “assess the climate risk, vulnerability, and climate adaptation plan to show how they interact with weather conditions”.
The list includes 26 other European cities, including the capitals of Athens, Greece, Berlin, Germany, Copenhagen, Denmark, Paris, France, or Stockholm, Sweden, but also the Italian city of Padua or Zurich in Switzerland.
The CDP highlights the absence of China, India and Russia from the list, “the three largest emitting countries, excluding the USA”.
According to this organization, the combined population of these 95 cities is 108 million, “a tiny percentage (2.6%) of the 4.2 billion people living in cities,” which “highlights the urgent need for more cities to raise their climate ambitions for those who live and work. In which “.
This year, 956 cities were evaluated, “a significant increase from the 591 cities evaluated in 2020,” which is the result of an effort to increase transparency.
“For the first time, more than a thousand cities disclose their environmental impact data” through the CDP system.
Those who make it to “List A” take “twice the climate measures as other cities, and also identify more than twice as many climate-related opportunities as developing sustainable transportation or clean technology sectors.”
This selection is now in its fourth year of existence, and in this edition, the criteria have been tightened, “to reflect the level of ambition necessary to reach the goals” of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.
Thus, 95 cities were selected this year, 9.8% of the 965 considered, compared to 88 last year, representing 14.9% of the total of 591 cities.
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