Rio De Janeiro Mayor Paes replaces Mayor Bloomberg as C40 Chair

The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) has announced today that Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes has been chosen to succeed New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as the new Chair of the C40 Steering Committee. Mayor Bloomberg will stay on as President of the C40 Board.

As the new Chair, Mayor Paes will lead the strategic direction of the organisation and carry on Mayor Bloomberg’s achievement of establishing the C40 as the world’s leading climate action organisation. He is set to assume the chairmanship at the C40 Mayors Summit, in Johannesburg in February 2014.

At the request of Mayor Paes, Mayor Bloomberg will stay on as President of the C40 Board. This will involve overseeing the day-to-day operations of the organisation and serving as a key counsellor to both the new chair and the organisation. Bloomberg Philanthropies will also remain a key funder of the organisation.

Mayor Paes stated that he is honoured and excited to be building on Michael Bloomberg’s legacy and carrying forward the organisation. He added that cities are leading the fight against climate change and that the work of C40 is going to become even more critical as the world become more urbanised.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson endorsed the work done by Mayor Bloomberg for C40, highlighting in particular how he has helped the organisation become the leading place where cities are collaborating to address climate change. He added that Eduardo Paes is an excellent choice as leader of C40, praising his success with the Rio Olympics.

Mayor Bloomberg has been credited for his commitment to the organisation, creating uniform benchmarks for success and for expanding knowledge-sharing between cities and likeminded organisations. As a result of his work, C40 Cities has undertaken more than 5,000 climate actions over the past 5 years which, when implemented, will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 248 million tonnes worldwide by 2020 with the potential to increase this to 1 billion tonnes by 2013.

Michael Bloomberg states that he has no doubt that Mayor Paes will continue to advance city level actions to the front of the climate change conversation.

Under Mayor Paes’ leadership, Rio de Janeiro has embraced both proven technologies and innovative sustainability solutions. As Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Paes has overseen the implementation of a Bus Rapid Transit system, installed the Rio Operations Centre, designed to improve the city’s efficiency and emergency response and has been made a considerable effort to urbanise the favelas of Rio. The city has recently won the C40 & Siemens City Climate Leadership Awards in the category “Sustainable Communities”.

Rio shares many of its major challenges - transportation, waste management and adaptation to the rise in sea level and extreme weather events – with many other emerging cities worldwide.

Mayor Paes believes that the sharing of knowledge between cities will produce concrete results in improving the quality of life of citizens and therefore as Chair of C40, he intends to deepen the city collaboration initiated by the previous chairs of New York, Toronto and London.