Sustainable Sweden Maillist

About Sustainable Sweden Association

Sustainable Sweden Association is a non-goverment organization working for an economical, ecological and social sustainable developement. We do so by carrying through projects that contributes to adding competence and networks both on a national as well as on an international level. We are co-operating with the Association for Swedish Eco-Municipalities and Swedish Eco-Municipalities are mostly hosts during our Sustainable Sweden Tours.

The members of the Sustainable Sweden Association have decades of experience in the field of sustainable development, specially in building systems combining the different aspects of sustainable development and making the process itself sustainable.

The knowledge and experience gathered now give us a platform to exchange these experiences with the rest of the world. Everything in the name of our overall goal – a sustainable earth.

We welcome organizations to participate and start projects together with us. We develop projects in order to find out how collaboration between business, government, science, agriculture, education, environmental organizations and municipalities can result in healthier communities and successful business.

USA

Sustainable Sweden Association has been supporting the emerging Eco-Municipality movement in United-States, inspired by what happened in Sweden, and co-founded by Sarah James, co-author of the American Planning Association Planning for Sustainability Policy Guide, and Torbjörn Lahti, founder of the Swedish Eco-Municipality movement. Both are authors of The Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns Can Change to Sustainable Practices, recipient of the Planetizen 2005 Top Ten Book Award in planning and design.

In the frame of the Insitute for Eco-Municipality Education and Assistance (IEMEA), they offer training and education in sustainable community planning, process leadership, and ecomunicipality and Natural Step workshops together in United States since 2004. For instance workshops and presentations they gave in Ashland, WI, Madison, WI, Minneapolis, MN, Vandergrift, PA, and Philadelphia, PA, inspired and motivated ecomunicipality initiatives that have emerged in the Chequamegon Bay region of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, Duluth, MN, Vandergrift, PA, and Lawrence Township, NJ.

In the past years several Sustainable Sweden Tours were organized with groups of representatives from the United States, so as to foster those kind of initiatives from the inspiration given by Swedish good examples and practices.

The Swedish-American cooperation is also going through the creation of SAGA, the Swedish American Green Alliance, through which Sustainable Association, the Swedish Eco-Municipalities Association (SEKOM) and the US Eco-Municipality network are conducting common activities of mutual learning and exchanges. For instance Sustainable Sweden Association is currently coordinating an exchange program launched by SAGA and called REACT US (Research on Environmental Action and Clean Tech in US-cities), trough which 5 swedish master students are going to conduct research on urban sustainability in Madison, WI, Minneapolis, MN, Boulder, CO, Portland, OR and Portsmouth, NH.

Japan

China

Ethiopia

Chile

Torbjörn Lahti has started being in contact with some Chilean actors a few years ago, when they expressed interest in establishing eco-municipalities in Chile. Indeed Torbjörn Lahti has been working with Swedish eco-municipalities ever since the concept was first launched in Sweden in the 1980s. He has developed a concept called “Eco-Municipality 5.0”, which has been used in many municipalities in Sweden and abroad.

Starting in October 2010, a Swedish-Chilean cooperation project was launched – “Solutions system combined with territorial change process and with implementation in Chile” -, with a consultant firm ESAM, as the project leader, Torbjörn Lahti as the project manager and with the support of the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth. The project aimed to build competence networks in Sweden that could support the sustainable processes already initiated in Chile, for instance trough the already existing Municipal Sustainable Certification System. Hence the realization of several study trips to Chile (dec. 2012 and may 2011) and of a Sustainable Sweden Tour with the Chilean delegation (sept 2011), mainly focusing on sustainable waste management, unconventional green energy sources and sustainable construction.

These exchanges of experiences permitted to gather an international network of non-state actors and local authorities interested in working together on the creation of pilot Eco-Municipalities in Chile according to the Swedish concept. For instance the Chilean NGO CetSur, and several Chilean municipalities from Santiago's Metropolitan Region and from the province of Arauco in the Biobio Region.

The cooperation is to continue in the coming months through a broader project supported by the European Union, which will involve Sustainable Sweden Association, CetSur and Local Authorities from 5 countries : Sweden and Chile, but also other Latin-American countries - Argentina, Colombia and El Salvador.