Speeding up the transition

At the Chinese Embassy our Sustainable Sweden board member Stig-Valter Karlsson had arranged a seminar together with the Embassy where a 6o persons delegation of mainly chinese municipal Leaders participated. I had the opportunity to tell them more about Eco-Municipalities in Sweden and the Concept Eco-Municipality 5.0. It' obvious that Chinese Municipalities are very interested in finding solutions and tools for how to work with sustainable development. Stig-Valter and I are planning for the next steps where we can go to China and introduce the Eco-Municipality Concept and where we can get new chinese municipality delegations to make Sustainable Sweden Tours with us.

The U.S. Embassy is financially supporting an exchange between "Green" Municipalities/Eco-Municipalities in US and Sweden. I had the great honor to together with my IEMEA colleague Sarah James be the moderator of a seminar at the US Embassy where 10 U.S.Mayors with some of their Staff met a delegation from the swedish Eco-Municipalities. I'm sure the seminar was an inspiration for all parts. The ten Mayors where also participating in a major conference in Stockholm because of Stockholm being appointed as the Green Capital of EU during 2010. The exchange between american and swedish Eco-Municipalities will hopefully continue during this year. Next time we might have a delegation from Sweden going to US.

The Chilean Embassy become more or less my office for a couple of weeks during the spring last year when we were planning for a mutual swedish-chilean Eco-municipality project. The Ambassador and his staff has been very friendly and helpful in this work. Thank you! My trip to Chile in December was very succesful and I'm looking forward to the coming year when we can start up the first Eco-Regions and Eco-Municipalities in Chile. We plan to have a Sustainable Sweden Tour for chileans in August. I'm also very pleased to see the interest from Swedish Eco-Municipalities, organizations and Clean Tech companies to build up a relationship with Chile. We had several work-shops in Sweden during January as a start for our ambition to build up a strong network in Sweden as a support to the chilean processes.

My connections to the French Canada was strengten last year thanks to Ms Kim Cornelissens visit to Sweden last year. Kim and I are planning for a couple of Sustainable Sweden Tours this year with attenders from the Province of Québec. The first one will be in May and the second one during the Autumn.

In addition to this we continue to work with countries  like Kenya, Ethiopia, Japan and New Zealand and welcome new countries to co-operate with our Sustainable Sweden Team. It's important if we want to speed up the sustainable transition of the human society.

Torbjörn Lahti

Chair, Sustainable Sweden