Casablanca, Morocco — The director of the Moroccan National Railway Office (ONCF), Mohamed Rabie Khlie, has presented four initiatives that the ONCF is planning on carrying out as part of the latest UN conference of the parties on climate change, COP22, which is set to take place from November 7th to 18th.
This “Climate Train” initiative, as the ONCF calls it, is a traveling exhibition open to all audiences. Its primary goal is to raise awareness about the importance of protecting the environment and to educate visitors on various climatic phenomena. It will also show the diversity of Morocco’s own biological resources and the efforts made to protect those resources.
But the ONCF didn’t do this all alone. The Climate Train is actually a French Moroccan endeavor, as the ONCF benefitted from the help of the SNCF, France’s national railway office. Last year, the SNCF had built its own Climate Train exhibition as part of COP21 in Paris.
The train exhibition went into effect on October 20th and will go on until November 5th in 12 Moroccan cities: Rabat Agdal, Kenitra, Tangier, Meknes, Fes, Taza, Nador Oujda, Casablanca, Khouribga, Safi and Marrakech as its final destination. It will then be open to the public for the 11 following days in which the COP22 will take place.
According to Moroccan publication “La Nouvelle Tribune,” the ONCF’s second major initiative, along with a slew of international partners, is placing environmentally-friendly transportation on COP22’s agenda under the theme, “Climatic challenges: Future Modes of Transportation.” The ONCF plans on distributing a manifesto to the
negotiators of COP22 to encourage the eligibility of transportation projects to benefit from 2020’s Climate Fund.
In its third initiative, the ONCF ensured the energy efficiency of its head office and of the Marrakech train station by installing photovoltaic panels and making them both electrically autonomous by 50%. These efforts will also be applied to the office’s other establishments.
The fourth initiative, “COP22 Participants Travel by Train,” is a key element for COP22’s success. The ONCF is committed to providing reliable transportation to the thousands of visitors attending COP22 by programming charter routes to Marrakech and making travel to the red city as efficient as possible.
