September 22, 2023.- On September 20, with the participation of nearly 30 technicians from the region, the Technical Subgroup on Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (SGT-MRV) of the Pacific Alliance, with the support of the Center for Clean Air Policy (CCAP) and the Institute of the Americas, held the first of two virtual sessions on ‘Sustainable taxonomies: a key tool to strengthen monitoring, reporting and verification of climate finance’.

The objective of the session was to introduce and discuss the concept of sustainable taxonomies, present an overview of the state of development and implementation of taxonomies in the world and especially in Pacific Alliance countries, and discuss how these taxonomies can guide investments and transparency in line with the Paris Agreement. Some key messages were:

• Sustainable taxonomies promote a common language in sustainable investments, aligning public and private actors on the type of actions to finance to meet the commitments of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement.

• The global taxonomy landscape indicates that the movement towards sustainable finance investment and capital mobilization has led to an increase in green taxonomies around the world. Jurisdictions in Western Europe, Asia and the Pacific have made progress over the past three years in developing policy and technical aspects working towards a transparent reporting architecture for sustainable finance.

• Although globally most taxonomies remain voluntary, there are exceptions such as China, the European Union and Malaysia. These are mandatory taxonomies in verification reporting. In the Pacific Alliance, Mexico is interested in making a taxonomy mandatory after the current piloting stage.

The report summarizing this first session (in Spanish), together with the recording and the exhibited presentations, can be found at the following link: https://alianzapacifico.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Relatoria-sesion-1-CdP-Taxonomias.pdf

September 6, 2023.- The High-Level Group (GAN) of the Pacific Alliance (PA), which brings together Vice Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade and their representatives from Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, met last Friday, September 1, 2023, in Lima.

The high authorities and representatives addressed the status of negotiations with the candidates for Associated State and the accession of new full members of the integration mechanism.

The GAN also reviewed the preparations for the X PA Investment Forum in New York; the VIII PA Youth Meeting, organized jointly with Nestlé, on October 18 in Lima; and the II PA Exporting SME Meeting, on November 9 in Lima.

The authorities received representatives of the Pacific Alliance Business Council (CEAP), made up of the private sector of the four countries, to learn about their initiatives and recommendations, as well as representatives of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a strategic partner of the PA, to follow up on the valuable technical-financial support of this institution in the development of topics such as innovation, environment, gender, etc.

The meeting was attended by Ignacio Higueras, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and Teresa Mera, Vice Minister of Foreign Trade, representing Peru, the current pro tempore presidency of the mechanism; Claudia Sanhueza, Undersecretary of International Economic Relations, representing Chile; Luis Felipe Quintero, Vice Minister of Foreign Trade, and Javier Higuera, Director of Regional Concertation and Integration Mechanisms of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, representing Colombia; and for Mexico, Efraín Guadarrama, General director of American Regional Organizations and Mechanisms of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Vicente Peredo, Head of the International Trade Negotiations Unit of the Ministry of Economy.

• The meeting, which took place in Santiago, brought together the main sectoral authorities from Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, as well as professionals from other Latin American countries.

September 5, 2023.- To generate a strategy to attract tourism investments for the member countries of the Pacific Alliance, strengthen coordination and generate implementation mechanisms, encouraging development, growth and consolidating the post-pandemic economic recovery. These were the main objectives of the meeting held in Santiago, which brought together the main sectoral authorities of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, and representatives of other Latin American countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

The meeting also addressed the work carried out in identifying the enabling conditions to generate the strategy for attracting tourism investment; determining the investment vectors, identifying investment opportunities in each country; generating tools to disseminate the support lines of each of the countries to facilitate investment and formalizing the sustainability mechanism of the strategy, establishing a Pacific Alliance Tourism Investment Committee and drawing up a biannual action plan.

During the meeting, authorities and participants attended the presentation “Green Investments for Sustainable Tourism”, as well as panels on regional integration as a mechanism to strengthen the attraction of tourism investments and the promotion of tourism investments as an instrument to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. They also received a message from Gustavo Santos, regional director for the Americas of the World Tourism Organization, who addressed the importance of promoting green investments, precisely the central motto of World Tourism Day to be celebrated on September 27.

In this context, the working spaces emphasized the importance of promoting cooperation and encouraging the implementation of sustainable investment schemes to attract tourism investments in the Pacific Alliance countries, in a scenario of reactivation of the industry, and also highlighted the need to generate enabling and facilitating conditions to promote a pro-investment ecosystem in the Pacific Alliance countries, benefiting potential investors and entrepreneurs interested in investing in tourism, and positioning the Pacific Alliance countries as destinations for investment in tourism, facilitating the opening of new businesses in the sector, the improvement of the existing offer and job creation.

The first investment attraction seminar was part of the implementation of the project financed by the Pacific Alliance Cooperation Fund called “Boosting the attraction of tourism investments for the sustainable reactivation of the Pacific Alliance countries”.

• A space to learn about the best of the sustainable tourism offerings of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, identify synergies and establish strategic alliances.

September 4, 2023.- Within the framework of the Tourism Cooperation Agreement of the Pacific Alliance, the entities responsible for the promotion of international tourism of the four countries – National Tourism Service of Chile (SERNATUR), PROCOLOMBIA, Secretariat of Tourism of Mexico (SECTUR), and PROMPERÚ – on August 17, 2023, the 1st Sustainable Tourism Business Meeting of the Pacific Alliance ended.

On August 9, the 1st Sustainable Tourism Business Meeting of the Pacific Alliance was inaugurated with words from Claricia Tirado, director of Tourism Promotion of PROMPERU, in her capacity as pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Alliance, where she indicated that: “for the Pacific Alliance, tourism is a very important sector due to its great relevance in the development of the countries and its significant influence, directly and indirectly, in the lives of millions of people in the world. To speak of tourism is to mention its great potential for economic growth, due to its capacity to generate employment and its compatibility with nature, the environment, and its social surroundings”. During the inauguration, the final video of the joint Promotion Campaign was also launched, published on the Pacific Alliance YouTube channel (https://youtu.be/neSwloXaoFc), which was presented by PROMPERU’s Director of Tourism Promotion: “… this video invites us to travel, to discover and fall in love with an Alliance full of magic, biodiversity, adventure, customs, gastronomy and traditions of tailor-made experiences”.

This was followed by the Academic Agenda, where Vicente Ferreyra Acosta, Vice President of Sustainable Tourism of the Sustainable & Social Tourism Summit (SSTS) gave a keynote speech entitled “Sustainable and Regenerative Tourism, an opportunity for regional development”, which was attended by more than 130 people, including outbound and inbound businessmen, experts and the general public, in which Vicente Ferreyra emphasized: “We have learned that without sustainability and regeneration it will be difficult for us to have a desirable future and without a future there is no tourism, so we have a very important responsibility, we have an open opportunity to enhance these aspects in a much better way, together as an alliance with common markets, with common positions, which I invite you to reflect on and move forward together. And we also have a very interesting opportunity to develop business, to develop products, to develop promotion with a focus on these issues, which in reality is little done but as an alliance we could position ourselves in that sense.”

The day ended with Fernando Mandri, president of the Sustainable & Social Tourism Summit, where 20 inbound tourism companies from Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru were trained in the construction of their value proposition in terms of sustainability through the preparation of their Business Pitch; this space allowed entrepreneurs to improve the sales pitch of their products with a high sustainable impact, which will enable them to generate more effective business meetings that will result in closing business deals for our entrepreneurs and beyond that, that together – Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, we contribute to one of the priorities of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of our countries.

The activities continued on August 16, where 19 inbound companies from the 4 countries that make up the Pacific Alliance, presented their value proposition to experts and outbound entrepreneurs, in a novel activity of pitch sessions where they received comments from the panel of experts in sustainable tourism; Beatriz Román Alzerreca, deputy director of Development of the National Tourism Service of Chile; Laura Durana Posada, who heads the Colombian Association of Responsible Tourism – ACOTUR; Sergio Rodríguez Abitia, president for the Americas of the International Social Tourism Organization (ISTO Americas, Canada), advisory councilor to both the Conservatory of Gastronomic Culture of Mexico and the Association of Food and Regional Cuisines of the Americas (Argentina) and vice president for Social Tourism of the Sustainable & Social Tourism Summit and the Ibero-American Summit on Accessible Tourism; and Francisco Basili, president of the Peruvian Association of Adventure, Ecotourism and Specialized Tourism (APTAE). In addition, in this space, about 20 outbound businessmen participating in the event made their requests for meetings according to their interest in the proposals presented through the pitches for the day of August 17.

In the last stage of the Meeting, 1-on-1 meetings were held between the outbound and inbound businessmen who participated in the pitch sessions the day before. These meetings were held in parallel in 9 sessions of 25 minutes each, where 80% of the scheduled and accepted appointments were made, highlighting that 89% of the companies that participated were meeting for the first time with the buyers present at the event, according to the results of surveys to outbound businessmen. Some of the appointments did not materialize because, at the time they were made, there was a strong earthquake in the city of Bogota, Colombia, so the companies involved were contacted to reschedule the appointments and maintain the business relationship. It should be noted that, according to the responses to the surveys after the networking session, the main products of interest were Vacation, focused on Culture, Gastronomy, History, Archeology, Nature and Adventure in the destinations of Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico.

31 August 2023 – The National Coordinators of the Pacific Alliance (PA), a regional integration mechanism made up of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, met today in Lima, Peru.

During the meeting, the National Coordinators addressed issues related to the expansion of the mechanism, the PA Cooperation Fund and the current status of the Joint Declarations of cooperation between the Pacific Alliance and Observer States, regional blocs and other allied bodies of the mechanism, on topics such as circular economy, gender, environment, among others.

They also discussed the guidelines for the development of cooperation initiatives between the Pacific Alliance and third states, as well as the celebration of the next meetings of the Pacific Alliance at the end of this year and the beginning of 2024. In the same way, they addressed the organization of important trade events that will benefit and promote the internationalization of MSMEs in the region.

The meeting was led by Peru, the current pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Alliance, and was attended by the National Coordinating Bodies of the countries that make up this integration mechanism.

With the presence of representatives from Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, the handover ceremony of the pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Alliance from Chile to Peru was held today in Santiago.

The ceremony was headed by Chile’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alberto van Klaveren, and the Undersecretary for International Economic Relations, Claudia Sanhueza, and was attended by Peru’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ana Cecilia Gervasi, and the Vice Minister of Tourism of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism, Madeleine Burns; for Colombia, the Vice Minister of Multilateral Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Elizabeth Taylor; and for Mexico, the Director General of American Regional Organizations and Mechanisms of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Efraín Guadarrama.

During the handover of the pro tempore presidency to his Peruvian counterpart, Minister Alberto van Klaveren emphasized that he “highly values the Pacific Alliance as a real contribution to regional prosperity and to the challenges we face in Latin America, by balancing economic, social and environmental development in an equitable and sustainable manner”. He added that “for Chile it is of special interest to strengthen ties between the countries of our continent, thus promoting welfare and social equality in the region”.

For her part, Minister Ana Cecilia Gervasi highlighted that “the occasion that brings together the four member countries shows that the Pacific Alliance is in a new stage, renewing its commitment to regional integration that allows us to face shared challenges”.

As part of its agenda for this period, the Peruvian pro tempore presidency will aim, among other objectives, to strengthen the economic and trade agenda of the mechanism with a view to increasing intra-alliance trade; reinvigorate cooperation to move forward together in areas such as education, development and social inclusion, youth and gender; promote the accession of new member countries of the Pacific Alliance, as well as strengthen the projection to the Asia-Pacific.

It is worth mentioning that within the framework of this ceremony, the Discussion “Perspectives of the Pacific Alliance and Regional Integration” was also held, with the participation of the high authorities of the four countries in the panel: “A living and sustainable alliance”, which was focused on four fundamental pillars: gender perspective in the Pacific Alliance; youth and the Pacific Alliance; integration, trade and environment; regional digital market; trade and SMEs; Pacific Alliance and its approach to the Asia-Pacific.

COMMUNICATIONS PPT PACIFIC ALLIANCE

July 31, 2023 – The National Coordinators of the Pacific Alliance (PA) -a regional integration mechanism in which Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru participate- met in Santiago, Chile, in a meeting that, among other matters, addressed the transfer of the pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Alliance from Chile to Peru.

During the morning, the National Coordinators (NCs) reviewed the upcoming activities of the Pacific Alliance, reviewed the work and minutes of previous PA meetings and also reviewed the reports of the Work Plans of the Technical Groups for the period August 2023-March 2024. In the afternoon, the National Trade Coordinators reviewed the reports of the Committees and Sub-Committees and working groups of the Additional Protocol to the PA Framework Agreement. They also held a virtual meeting with Pablo Garcia and Rodrigo Contreras of the Inter-American Development Bank.

The meeting was led by Chile, current pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Alliance, and was attended by the National Coordinating Bodies of the countries that make up this integration mechanism.

PACIFIC ALLIANCE COMMUNICATIONS

July 18, 2023.- On June 28, 2023, Universidad de la Frontera presented in a virtual event the “Diagnosis on the participation of rural and indigenous entrepreneurship in productive chains: towards the construction of a strategy that promotes the participation of women, particularly rural women, in these areas”.

The study was conducted by the Universidad de la Frontera (UFRO) within the framework of the 2022 call of the Pacific Alliance Cooperation Fund, in which the PA Gender Technical Group (GTG) obtained funding for the project.

The event was attended by Camilo Rosas Flores, director of the IDER-UFRO Institute, Verónica Torres Barriga, IDER-UFRO professional, Catalina Garrido Higuera, IDER-UFRO professional and project coordinator and Laura Soto Arroyave, GTG coordinator.

The expert presented the main results of the study and highlighted the participation of female employment in foreign trade, the barriers faced by rural women entrepreneurs, as well as opportunities and strengths, in addition to good practices developed from public policies, among others. In addition, Garrido indicated that the results can be viewed in detail by downloading them from the Pacific Alliance’s web platform.

This study is in line with the priority actions and goals set out in the Roadmap for the autonomy and economic empowerment of women in the Alliance and its implementation plan, as well as the Presidential Declaration of the Pacific Alliance on Gender Equality and the Declaration of Bahía Málaga, in which the GTG was instructed to implement an action plan to promote greater participation of companies led by women in productive chains, with special emphasis on rural women’s entrepreneurship.

It is worth noting that this diagnosis will serve as a basis, together with the results obtained at the First Ministerial Meeting for the Autonomy and Economic Empowerment of Women held in 2022, for the formulation and consolidation of a strategy that meets the mandate of the Declaration of Bahía Málaga and promotes greater participation of rural women’s entrepreneurship in the value chains of the Pacific Alliance.

July 18, 2023 – On July 12, the Pacific Alliance Technical Subgroup for Measurement, Reporting and Verification (SGT-MRV) presented the results of the study ‘Devaluation and competitiveness in the carbon market’, which was prepared by the Mexican consulting firm Mercado Ambiental. The work, which received financial support from Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), is contextualized in the coordination framework of the SGT-MRV and responds to a request from delegates of the Alliance countries to understand the implications of various economic variables (such as exchange rate, inflation and growth, among others) on the design and implementation of carbon pricing instruments.

The study focused on the three countries that already have at least one carbon pricing instrument in place, such as Chile, Colombia and Mexico. In this regard, the exhibitors of Mercado Ambiental, Gerardo Ramirez and Luis Colin, highlighted:

• In macroeconomic terms, it is recommended that the design of future carbon price instruments should consider the effects of inflation and the exchange rate. In the first, adjusting periodically (e.g. annually) to the purchasing value considering some price index, and in the second, if it is fixed in foreign currency (e.g. US dollar) considering the appreciation or depreciation of the local currency with respect to the dollar. These are the variables that most influence carbon prices and markets in the Pacific Alliance countries.

• The successful implementation of a carbon price instrument, as well as the efficient operation of carbon markets, requires coordinated inter-institutional work, mainly between ministries of finance and ministries of environment.

• An adequate carbon price can encourage investments in cleaner technologies and financial flows that can be directed to climate change mitigation and adaptation projects. It is therefore necessary to ensure that measures to control inflation and devaluation do not interfere with climate goals (and vice versa).

• With the growing interest in participating in international markets or in cooperation mechanisms such as Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, priority sectors must be defined for the implementation of mitigation projects, as well as strengthening institutional capacities and ensuring clear and transparent rules.

• With the current context of carbon pricing instruments, it is possible to visualize a potential regional carbon market with Chile, Colombia and Mexico as demand generators and Peru and Ecuador as reduction supply generators. This could allow the Pacific Alliance to take advantage of opportunities for emissions reductions, while enhancing regional cooperation.

A recording of the webinar can be accessed at the following link:

https://zoom.us/rec/share/DQ-nGp4-w7ffyJtzSzt9Blq9CxJLhPS-bch51tmVzgUP2EkbjmeMh2o1izBk9SHJ.CvZq0I8UGLhyqrJw

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