This week (19 June 2017) AER President Magnus Berntsson was elected R20 (regions of climate action) President by the R20 Governing Board and General Assembly.

AER and R20 have enjoyed a close relationship over the last years, leading to a smooth and almost expected result.

After many years of technical assistance to regions throughout the world to enable their green transition, R20 is now working, with the support of AER, towards becoming the leading organisation to help subnational governments finance green projects with a mixture of public and private investments. To know more about the current joint AER/R20 work see here.

After Magnus Berntsson’s election, AER Vice President Lukas Mandl and AER Secretary General Mathieu Mori took part in the first R20 Austrian World Summit  under the patronage and in the presence of Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, of the Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern and of the R20 founding chair Arnold Schwarzenegger. This Summit was the occasion to follow up on the need to finance the green transition at subnational level. With his double hats of AER and R20 President, Magnus Berntsson had all legitimacy to defend AER’s stance for further public and private funds to be geared towards regions. Surrounded by public, private and NGO leaders the Summit was a strong step in making AER and R20 known worldwide. (To see some of the encounters of the Summit please see our Facebook page here)

All Austrian AER members were invited for free to the Summit giving the opportunity to the AER President to meet several of them for fruitful discussions.

In view of the enormous success of this first edition of the R20 Summit, please take note of the next edition which will take place in Vienna on 15th May 2018.