Sustainable Sweden Tour - cooperation Chile-Sweden

In September 2011 Sustainable Sweden Association had the great and first pleasure to welcome a group of Chileans. This Tour was part of a cooperation project that started 2 years ago between Chile and Sweden and which aim is to create eco-municipalities in Chile modeled on the “ekokommun 5.0” concept developed in Sweden by Torbjörn Lahti. Therefore the visits and the workshops have been focused on Chilean communes challenges towards sustainability, such as waste management, renewable energy, biogas and green buildings.

Among the Chileans participants were local actors, for instance coming from the muncipality of Calera de Tango and the region of Arauco, but also private companies and representatives from the Chilean Environmental Department. Such a diversity made it possible to integrate both the national, regional, local and individual levels in the projects and processes.

This journey to Sweden has been a great opportunity to build bridges between actors from the 2 countries. Several Swedish clean-tech companies were interested in sharing their knowledge and their technology to create alternative projects in Chilean communes.

On this solid basis the cooperation project between Chile and Sweden is likely to go deeper. One of the main future objective is to create a capacity centre in Chile that could support and coordinate the sustainable initiatives and actions. The next step is a trip to Chile in November 2011 for the interested Swedish actors, which is hoped to be a concrete setting for the projects and to confirm the enthusiasm aroused by the Sustainable Sweden Tour.