Listen! Lille & Oujda are tackling Climate change together

Lille (France) and Oujda (Morocco) won the 3rd prize at the PLATFORMAwards last year for their “Decentralised Cooperation Project for Sustainable Energy”. On Friday (5 March), their representatives presented their partnership on “C’est pas du vent” radio programme on RFI, together with Frédéric Vallier, Secretary General of CEMR.

Deputy Major of Lille Marie-Pierre Bresson, Adnane Elghazi head of planning and sustainable development department in Oujda and Frédéric Vallier were interviewed by Anne-Cécile Bras, journalist at RFI on the role of cities in tackling Climate change and decentralised cooperation. 

“Decentralised cooperation is a territorial innovation tool, and this is the role of networks such as CEMR and PLATFORMA,” Ms Bresson said.

She presented the long-lasting succesful partnership between Lille and Oujda, stressing that there are many common challenges between the two cities: “in Lille we have to heat buildings, in Oujda we have to refresh them, and all of this has a link to energy,” she explained.

Adnane Elghazi spoke about the concrete results of the partnership, including technical solutions to reduce energy consumption but also the  citizenship and awareness raising parts of the project with the creation of a dedicated info point for citizens. 

In the framework of CEMR 70 anniversary, Frédéric Vallier gave an overview of the activities taken by twon and regions, such as the Covenant of Mayors which gathers 10,000 municipalities and give the possibility to create local action plans, or the Green city accord launched during the European Week of Regions and Cities 2020. 

Listen to the extract  (in French)

(Listen to the full recording of Friday 5 March 2020 on RFI website)