Awareness-raising and training sessions on ecological transition will be offered to all mayors in France, the Minister for Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion Christophe Béchu announced on Tuesday.
“A period of training, awareness” will be organized by the agencies of the ministry, “Météo France, Ademe, the French Office for Biodiversity” in the prefectures or sub-prefectures, “near the place where each mayor exercises his function, ”announced Christophe Béchu on RTL. These training courses, free for elected officials, will be launched “from the first quarter” of 2023, the minister told AFP.
Beyond understanding the situation on a national or global scale, these sessions will make it possible to “look, territory by territory, at what the consequences of climate change already are and the ways in which we can take measures to mitigate them and adapt to it,” said the minister.
A three-hour training
The training will not be compulsory for the city councilors. But such sessions have already been organized in the department of Indre, which has 241 municipalities. The training “brought together 251 elected officials”, according to Christophe Béchu. “Mayors have declined because they have already taken training, have already organized it”, but others wished to attend accompanied by a deputy.
The training, lasting three hours, constitutes “the model that we are going to generalize”, added the minister, hoping that in the next two years, “30,000 mayors” will be trained.