After the joint EU-NZ cities meeting on 27 September 2021, further online meetings were organised by partners from Lemvig (Climatorium) and Nelson (Wakatu Incorporation) without requiring input from the Australasia Helpdesk. The IURC project team has met online with Sarah Lund from the Danish Climatorium. Meetings are currently taking place every fortnight, focused on collaborative planning for a conference scheduled for 17-19 August 2022. This conference will be hosted by the Climatorium in Lemvig, but the plan is to have a session devoted to the IURC partnership. This session is looking to support youth engagement with climate actions.
Outlook for 2022
Following the launch of the New Zealand collaborations in September 2021, a lot has been achieved in just over three months. All the selected cities have shown enthusiastic collaboration with their partners, and have reached a point where they can identify priorities for joint projects leading up to city visits later in 2022. The New Zealand Government maintains a website summarising its COVID-19 border controls at https://covid19.govt.nz/travel/international-travel-and-transit/. The emergence of the Omicron variant has delayed previous announced relaxation of controls of travel from Australia, which is likely to push back plans to begin opening the border to other countries. The New Zealand Country Coordinator is monitoring announcements and will schedule study visits according to the contingency measures.
