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Great news for 2017 ! The upcoming year marks the 25th anniversary of the Rio Summit on Environment and Development, and even if much has been made in the objective of creating a sustainable earth, there is still a lot of issues that need to be taken care of.

We are then starting to plan an open Sustainable Sweden Tour for spring or summer 2017. This time, we plan on making this tour accessible to any individual, or organization interested. Anyone interested in taking part in a SuS Tour is invited to contact us to get more detailed information.

Preparing a Sustainable Sweden Tour takes some time, as we have to contact sometimes hundreds of hosts and guests alike. Furthermore, we have to carefully establish a route across all the Eco-municipalities we intend to visit, and plan accommodation for our guests.

More information about the place and the dates will be available as we advance in our planning in the following months.

If you want to participate or have more information, you can write directly to Torbjörn Lahti at : torbjorn(at)sustainablesweden.org

Between the 27th of May and the 6th of June, a delegation from Tigray, Ethiopia joined us for a Tour that took place in Stockholm and later Umeå. The participants got to meet with different organizations, companies, and this time even natural reserves, to learn from these examples. Several conferences were also held in order to assess the progress made within the Ethiopian Eco-municipalities´program.

For a fully detailed summary of the Tour, visit the page below. Otherwise you can find a list of all the Tours and a summary of each of them under the menu “About the Tours”

Summer 2016 Tour in Stockholm and Umeå

On the 2nd of March 2016, a workshop was held in Addis Ababa and Arba Minch (Ethiopia) by Sustainable Sweden Association (SSA) and Sustainable Sweden Development Ethiopia (SSDE). A total 26 participants from different organizations and parts of the country attended to this workshop which was dedicated to assessing SSDE’s work in 2015/2016. This meeting was especially important as it coincides with the second Growth and Transformation Plan that includes sustainable objectives and puts an emphasis on the development of rural areas.

Since the first workshop that was held in January 2015 to introduce SSDE’s work to the Ethiopian Eco-municipality network, more than a year had passed, and it was time to re-evaluate the work that had been done in Ethiopia.

The participants were representatives from :

• Ethiopian Ministry of Urban Development and Housing (MUDHo) (7 participants)
• Ethiopian Ministry of Health (MOH) (1 participant)
• Ethiopian Tourism Organization (ETO) (1 participant)
• Federal Technical and Vocational Education and Training Agency (FTVETA) (1 participant)
• Ethiopian Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Climate Change (MoEFCC) (1 participant)
• Adaba Town and Mada Walabu University (3 participants)
• Dodola Town and Adama University (respectively 1 and 3 participants)
• Woldia University (1 participant)

Mr. Zemede Tefera, Head of the bureau of the Urban Development and Housing, gave a short presentation of the tasks that were expected from the participants. It was followed by a short speech by Adane Negash, who talked about the current state of SSDE and its actions, and determined which projects needed to be given priority. Kenneth Gyllenstig, coordinator of SEKOM then summed up the experiences of the swedish eco-municipalities, and what they coud share with Ethiopia. Finally, Torbjörn Lahti, chairman of SSAE concluded with a summary of the list of organizations that were taking part in the process.

During the question sessions, many issues were raised. Amongst these were questions about :

• SSDE’s preparation to handle the project
• Sources of financing
• Compatibility with the Growth and Transformation Plan
• Criteria to determine which cities will participate in the project
• How will the network actors cooperate

It was then decided that an agreement would be signed upon agreeing on the details of the project. A steering committee was also to be established in order to conduct the project. It would include members from Ethiopian Ministry of Urban Development and Housing (MUDHo), FTVET, Ethiopian Ministry of Education (MOE),Ethiopian Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Ethiopian Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MOCT), and SSDE.

Other issues that were tackled during this workshop included the study tour that four selected Ethiopian municipalities are to do in Sweden. We discussed budget costs for the Tour, and criteria to determine which of the cities needed the most training.
The creation of a training centre in Mekelle supervised by Mr. Adane Negash was also agreed upon.

APRIL 2016

A new Sustainable Sweden Tour is planned for April 2016. It is a Study Tour and preparation for the upcoming ”Pilot Project for Ecomunicipalities in Ethiopia”, which is expected to start during 2016. The Tour is designed as a training program with a combination of theory and field studies. The participants will get a deeper understanding of sustainable development with a special focus on Ecomunicipalities. The host municipalities will be ecomunicipalities who will share their many years of experiences of how to strategically transform their communities in sustainable direction. The theoretical parts of the training will focus on the concept Ecomunicipality 5.0, which will be the frame work for the Ethiopian projects.

Following the decision of the Ethiopian Government to develop its second Growth and Development Plan, a delegation from the region of Tigray came to Umeå and Stockholm for a Sustainable Sweden Tour, where we got to visit companies, NGOs, municipalities and their diverse initiatives in various different fields of sustainability.

For a detailed account of this Tour, visit the page below. You can also find a list and summary of all the previous Tours under the menu “About The Tours”

June 2015 Tour in Sweden : delegation from Tigray, Ethiopia

Between the 24th and the 31st of January, representatives from Sustainable Sweden and SEKOM went to Chile. The Tour specifically visited the Biobío Region, the University of Concepción, and the Eco-region of Arauco. For a detailed summary of our journey in Chile, visit the January 2015 Tour’s page by clicking here.

If you wish to know more about the conference, it has been documented by Mekelle University here

At the beginning of January 2015, Mekelle University in the region of Tigray, Ethiopia held a conference named “Eco-municipality in the region of Tigray” with the members of Sweden Sustainable Development Ethiopia (SSDE). and in collaboration with Tigrai Regional Health Bureau, Mekelle City Administration and Tigrai Bureau of Urban Development Trade and Industry. The goal was to talk about the Pilot Project for Eco-municipalities in Ethiopia, and in particular for the development of the Tigray region.

The theme of the conference was “Linking knowledge to Policy and Action for Sustainable Development and Waste Management”. During the conference several issues were addressed :

• Explanation of the concept and history of Eco-municipality, and the contents that were to be implemented in Ethiopia.
• We talked about Waste Management Practices in Mekelle and its implication for future strategy.
• Current situation and challenges regarding the Waste Management System in Tigray
• Green and open spaces in Mekelle.

As of 2015, 8 Municipalities and 5 Universities/Technical colleges were participating in the project. Together, they form the first network of Ethiopian Eco-municipalities.

Dear readers,
Torbjörn Lahti -Sustainable Sweden chairman- and other guests will give you 5 lectures through Ecomuna in March.
The schedule is flexible, but the idea is to have a lecture twice a week at different times to make it available for people around the world.

You can find all the informations on the program (click on it if you want to see it larger) below.

Please, feel free to share the information around you !

On the 28th of January, Sustainable Sweden and Sekom have organized a webinar named « Organic Waste Powers City Transporation » through the Ecomuna hub.
The webinar was about 1,5 hours and the guests were Lars Thunberg (president of Sekom and vice mayor of Helsingborg city) and Kim Olsson (CEO of NSR AB, which is working in Helsingborg). All the attendees were from North America and interested in Waste Management within the city and most of them were representatives of municipalities that are following the Natural Step’s 4 system conditions.

After a brief introduction of the Ecomuna Team that worked on the organization of this meeting, Mr. Thunberg gave us a presentation introducing the history, the work and the goals of Sekom. After having reminded us that Sekom is the oldest municipality organization for sustainable development in the world (the first eco-municipality was « born » in 1983), Mr. Thunberg gave us the key to understand how a municipality in Sweden has the capacity to build a sustainable development plannification. In fact, Sweden is one of the most decentralized countries in the world : people are paying most of their taxes directly to their municipalities, which are responsible to run most of the public services and have a monopoly on physical planning and land use.

At this point, Sekom has reached 90 municipalities, that has become or will become eco-municipalities. The goal of the association is to be a leading network for a sustainable Sweden.

Besides his role as president for Sekom, Mr. Thunberg is also vice mayor of Helsingborg. This city is an eco-municipality since 1995, and there is a will of the city council members to work together for sustainable development over any political consideration. Their challenges are to have the city sustainable for 2035, to build more sustainable houses and to become energy neutral.

That’s why they are working together with the company NSR AB (http://www.nsr.se/), represented by its CEO Kim Olsson during the meeting. This company is in charge of Waste Management within 6 municipalities (it’s a public owned company) to produce Biogas for Public Transportation. Their work is based on a system view thinking. It means investments for news ways of treating the waste, but also to bet on the new generations to fulfill the aim of the company, which is to make people understand that waste is a ressource to produce new renewable energy. In a long term perspective, the goal is to inspire people consuming the products they bought, not to throw them away without using, consuming them.

For more details, we invite you to see the record of the meeting. You can find it here: http://card.adobeconnect.com/p4bb3aejtd1/

Don’t hesitate to have a look at the Ecomuna facebook page and give us a like if you want the news: https://www.facebook.com/ecomunicipality

Sustainable Sweden, Sekom and the Ecomuna Team want to thank you for your participation, both presenters and people that attended the meeting !