Healthy Indoors Magazine
Issue link: https://hi.healthyindoors.com/i/1455789
36 | January/February 2022 SUSTAINABILITY Snippets By Tom Murray tioning to renewable energy; developing low-carbon transpor t services; protecting the environment; and improving water and wastewater management all while advancing education, affordable housing and creating jobs. See Sustainability Bond Framework (gouvernement.lu). These efforts have landed Luxembourg in the number two position on the 2020 Environmental Protection Index. 2020 Environmental Performance Index | Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy. The sustainability future looks bright for the people of Luxembourg. According to recent surveys, 79 percent of people in the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) think that climate change and its consequences are the biggest challenge for humanity in the 21 st century and the government believes that it is through sustainability effor ts that they will meet their climate-change goals. They also believe strongly that their youth will play a major role in meeting this challenge. Luxembourg has taken a major step forward in this regard by designating youth delegates to the United Nations Youth Delegates Program (UNYD). The UNYD Luxembourg Program is an ed- ucational oppor tunity and a citizenship education project, which aims to suppor t the UN Youth Delegates from Luxem- W e continue our worldwide sus- tainability tour this month with the country of Lux- embourg, a small landlocked country in western Europe. Luxembourg is about the size of Rhode Island and is bordered on the west by Belgium, the south by France and on the east by Germany. It has a rich history dating back to the stone age, more than 35,000 years ago, when people set- tled in the area for the first time. During the Iron Age, it was occupied by the Celts reaching new levels of prosperity in the first century B.C. In 53 B.C., the Romans, under Julius Caesar, occupied the area and the residents of the occupied area, follow- ing two revolts, eventually adapted to the Roman way of life. In the 4 th century, Rome abandoned the area allowing for the infil- tration of German Franks. In the mid-20th century, during World War II, the German Wehrmacht invaded Luxembourg, placing it first under a mil- itary administration and then annexing it directly to Germany. After the war, Lux- embourg abandoned its politics of neu- trality and joined the Nor th Atlantic Trea- ty Organization and the United Nations. In the 21 st century, its government has focused on developing the country into a "knowledge" economy, where goods and services are based principally on knowl- edge-intensive activities that contribute to the advancement of technical and scien- tific innovation. Today, Luxembourg enjoys one of the highest Gross Domestic Prod- ucts (GDP) per capita in the world. Its motto reflects this success — "Mir wëlle bleiwe, war mir sin," which means "We want to remain what we are." So how does this rich history and eco- nomic success translate into sustainability? Let's take a look. On 2 September 2020, Luxembourg launched a Sustainability Bond Frame- work, which enables the issuance of green, social or sustainability bonds in line with the effor ts under taken by Luxembourg's government over the last years in the field of sustainable finance. The framework has been laid out so as to meet the criteria for sustainable and green bonds defined by the International Capital Markets As- sociation (ICMA) and its Green, Social and Sustainability Bonds principles. So, how does this framework work? Simply put, proceeds from the bonds is- sued through this framework can only be used to finance or refinance eligi- ble expenditures which fall into specific green and social categories, such as the construction of green buildings; transi- Sustainability in Luxembourg