Climate change constitutes one of the most pressing global challenges of this century. In 2015, the international community achieved a historic agreement on climate change at the Conference of the Parties COP21 in Paris. The agreement charts a new course in global efforts to keep the rise in the temperature of the planet well below 2 degrees Celsius and to strengthen national capacities to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

To achieve these ambitious goals, all social actors need to play complementary roles and make concrete progress in their countries Parliaments exercise functions that are exclusive to that institution and can play a critical role in accelerating progress to combat climate change at the national level through lawmaking, oversight, budgeting and awareness raising. This requires parliamentarians to expand their technical knowledge base.

ParlAmericas supports parliamentary climate action through innovative programs, dialogues, and partnerships designed for parliamentarians of the Americas and the Caribbean to promote the highest political commitments for advancing legislative work on climate change mitigation and adaptation in the hemisphere. As part of our climate change program, we provide parliamentarians with knowledge resources informed by evidence-based research on climate change and field-based, context-driven learning. We create the spaces to establish direct dialogue with peers, local and international experts, and key stakeholders to advance the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the Sustainable Development Agenda and the adoption of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean.