Minas Gerais renews agreement with Nord-Pas de Calais.

Minas News Agency - Every day, Minas Gerais expands its international relations and establishes partnerships that generate positive results for the population. For this reason, the 3rd Actors Forum is taking place in Belo Horizonte until Wednesday (13), a meeting of technicians from various areas of Minas Gerais and the French region of Nord-Pas de Calais, with the aim of building a work agenda of mutual interest.

During the opening of the event, on Monday evening (11), at the Banco do Brasil Cultural Center (CCBB), Governor Antonio Anastasia and the Vice-President of the Regional Council for Citizenship, International Relations and Decentralized Cooperation, Majdouline Sbai, signed an agreement to renew cooperation between Minas Gerais and Nord-Pas de Calais, established in 2009. Anastasia highlighted that the renewal of the agreement will allow for an increasingly close exchange, with great advantages and positive consequences for both sides.

“Today, we are an example for relations between France and Brazil. This agreement, which is already a tradition, is serving as a benchmark for other regions of France. This, of course, imposes more responsibility on us, at a time when this agreement is strengthening in the areas of the environment, university cooperation, researchers, and culture,” said the governor.

The Forum brings together an audience of 40 French citizens and 60 miners to evaluate the actions carried out and underway, and to define the next steps for cooperation. The discussions are held around four working groups: Mineralogy, Culture and Heritage, Environment, and Research and Higher Education and Innovation.

According to Majdouline Sbai, representative of the Nord-Pas de Calais region, Minas Gerais is one of the most developed states in Brazil, and renewing the partnership is important to foster further growth. "We will further strengthen our friendship and partnership with Minas Gerais in various areas, expand our relationship, and forge closer ties for the common good," stated Majdouline.

“Cooperation between Minas Gerais and the Nord-Pas de Calais region is fundamental, and I am certain that this relationship will yield not only increasingly concrete results, but also the fruits of a friendship that, in the past, led the first inhabitants of this state to dream of freedom based precisely on the ideals of the French when they took their first steps towards equality, fraternity, and liberty—ideals that are equally inscribed in the history of our state,” emphasized Governor Anastasia.

At the opening of the Forum, the Minas Gerais State Environmental Foundation (Feam) officially launched the Energy and Climate Change Plan for Minas Gerais, a project resulting from cooperation with Nord-Pas de Calais. The start was marked by the signing of a tripartite agreement between Feam, Ademe (the French Agency for Environment and Energy), and the Nord-Pas de Calais region.

The regional government of Nord-Pas de Calais has invested approximately €245 in the development of the plan, which will be carried out by Enviro Consult. This is a French consulting firm with international expertise in the development of climate plans. The work is expected to last 20 months. The stages will be monitored by the Energy and Climate Change Management of FEAM (Fundação Estadual do Meio Ambiente - State Environmental Foundation) and include, in addition to conducting a diagnosis of regional vulnerabilities in the context of climate change, workshops to gather input from various economic sectors for the development of scenarios and proposals for public policies to be implemented.

Cooperation

Cooperation with the French region is currently the most active of the State's partnerships with foreign local governments and has yielded products in all areas of interest identified by the parties. In 2011 and 2012 alone, approximately €1,3 million was secured for the next three years, originating from partners and external sources, for academic mobility and the development of relevant projects between the parties, such as the preparation of the Energy and Climate Change Plan.

In May of this year, the Government of Minas Gerais formalized, at the headquarters of the French Development Agency in Paris, a tripartite partnership between the Government of Minas Gerais, the AFD, and the Nord-Pas de Calais region. Through the Memorandum of Understanding, the AFD contributed €100 (non-refundable grant) for technical cooperation activities between Minas Gerais and French actors in five areas, three of which will have direct involvement from the Nord-Pas de Calais region. Negotiations for the agreement began last year during the Rio+20 meeting. The areas are urban mobility, the development of an energy/climate plan for the territory, the reconversion of polluted and degraded areas, solid waste management, and the development of a technological and aeronautical hub.

In the cultural field, also this year, a letter of intent was signed aiming at cooperation between the two regions (Minas Gerais and Nord-Pas de Calais), seeking the decentralization of public action in cultural matters. The intention is to facilitate intercultural dialogue and the exchange of experiences with the identification and dissemination of best practices, in order to promote education, social inclusion and employability through culture.

Solid partnership

Bilateral relations between Minas Gerais and the Nord-Pas de Calais region began with the establishment, in 1944, of the Alliance Française and the Cooperation and Cultural Action Service of the French Embassy in Brazil. Later, an Honorary Consulate of France and a France/Brazil Chamber of Commerce were built in Minas Gerais, strengthening Franco-Brazilian ties.

Mining activity, a common characteristic of both territories, was the motivating factor for the rapprochement between the two regions. Minas Gerais has mining as one of its main economic activities, while the Nord-Pas de Calais region ended its mining activities in 1990, suffering abruptly at the social, environmental, urban planning, and economic levels as a consequence of the end of exploitation. This common characteristic led to the identification of potential areas for cooperation and, in 2008, a Sister City Agreement was signed, strengthening the relationship with France with the aim of establishing decentralized cooperation.

In April 2009, then-Governor Aécio Neves and the President of Nord-Pas de Calais, Daniel Percheron, reaffirmed their commitment by signing a cooperation agreement based on equal ambitions, aiming to encourage sustainable development and prosperity in their respective territories, in economic, environmental, and social aspects. The following areas were planned: land use planning, reconversion of degraded areas, cultural promotion and discussions related to heritage, environment and protected areas, and scientific incentives and promotion related to the topic.