The four-day Ukraine Green Recovery Conference kicked off in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Tuesday, November 28.
The event aims to take stock of the challenges ahead and discuss strategies and concrete solutions underpinning a green recovery from the war, the European Commission reports.
The conference aims to offer the public, business and government a holistic approach to the green recovery and reconstruction of Ukraine. It will help analyze specific challenges and solutions to ensure that environmental sustainability is central to future investments and reforms. The event will help prepare the necessary financing, technical and legislative support in advance.
The conference will consist of 2 segments:
- Policy segment – PHOENIX Conference (November 28-29) – focused on politicians and civil society, setting common challenges and considering the main measures to support the policy of green reconstruction of Ukraine, to present the current implementation and the first concrete results of the PHOENIX initiative (a specially designed combination of programs of the European Commission) .
- Business segment – Conference on circular economy and business communication (November 30 – December 1) – a business perspective for presenting specific applied solutions, discussing systemic obstacles to the deployment of a more circular and greener economy and connecting companies from the EU and Ukraine.
President of the Association of Environmental Professionals (PAEW) Lyudmila Tsyganok u Facebook emphasized that the conference will make it possible to plan and implement reconstruction projects "here and now" and not postpone them until "better times".
"Building and strengthening bridges of interaction with European experts, business, and specialists is our contribution to the future victory with PAEW," she wrote. "We have no other choice but to make a "green economic miracle."
The Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, Ruslan Strilets, stated that the key principles of reconstruction should be Build Back Better ("better than it was") and Build Back Greener.
"Today in Vilnius we are talking about issues of green recovery of our country. We appreciate that the partners are already ready to help us go from ruins to green transformation," said Strelets.
He quoted the words of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, that reconstruction is not only about what we should do after victory, but also what we need to do right now.
Strelets emphasized that, despite the war, a number of initiatives for European integration and achieving a more sustainable future have already been launched, namely:
- an emphasis on green projects that will create up to 4.2 million green jobs, offsetting war losses;
- adoption of the necessary European integration laws, which, in particular, contribute to the attraction of investments;
- attraction of investors and development of 20 construction projects of new European-style waste processing plants in different parts of the country;
- Together with German partners, the Climate Office in Ukraine was launched, which will allow attracting green finance for post-war reconstruction;
- reforestation – Ukraine fulfilled the program of planting 1 billion trees by 44%;
- opening of 7 centers for growing seedlings;
- large-scale reform of the forest industry;
- digitalization of the forest – a number of electronic services that allow you to effectively control the movement of wood.
"Grateful to the EU for creating the Ukraine Facility. This is extremely important and will give Ukraine the opportunity, with the support of the EU, to confidently move towards achieving climate neutrality, building a circular economy, as well as modernizing industry according to the best standards and restoring our natural resources," he said.
Previously, EcoPolitic analyzed how exactly the process of green recovery of Ukraine is seen by our European partners.
