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| Best City Practises (2000 - 2001) |
Welcome to read more of
the Best City Practises Project 2000-2001! The project - BCP - as it soon was called and
known as, followed-up the Best Environmental Practice in Baltic Cities Award 1999 where 15
cities participated with good practises. Something useful needed to be done with those 15
excellent practices, and thus the planning of BCP started.
After the planning phase, the
BCP Project was launched towards cities with a large good practice seminar in Autumn 2000,
and this was then followed by matchmaking of city couples for benchmarking of the good
practices. Five city couples were selected for these activities: Municipality of Gotland
& ECAT Lithuania, Cities of Elbląg and Šiauliai, Sundsvall and Sopot, Bützow and
Sillamäe, and Turku and Panevėžys. During 2000-2001 these cities carries out a
benchmarking exercise where a feasibility analysis of the good practice between the cities
was made, and plans for implementation created. After the BCP was finished, several of the
good practices have been implemented in the participating cities, mainly with EU funds and
on own financing of the cities.
The BCP project also
experimented with the so-called 3R Gender Analysis in the selection of city couples. This
means that together with other aspects, the participation and influence of men and women
within the city couples was analysed and used as one basis for selection of the
participating cities. The project co-funder, the Nordic Council of Ministers, is putting
emphasis on the Gender aspect as well as the UBC, which has decided that all its
activities are being evaluated from gender perspective.
We would like to Warmly Thank
the Nordic Council of Ministers for the support to the project.
Below follows a brief
presentation of the work of the city couples. More detailed information on the project can
be achieved in the attached BCP report (pdf ~1260 KB).
Environmental bus /Municipality of Gotland and ECAT
Lithuania
Municipality of Gotland has good experiences in using a mobile educational Environmental
bus that woke the interest of ECAT Lithuania. Gotland had used the bus since 1994 so they
had a lot of experience on how the bus works in practise as a tool for environmetal
education. This mobile laboratory can reach remote places and easily rises interest in
environmental issues, especially among young people.
Both partners are facing
similar kind of environmental education and information challenges. Improvement of
environment is a common goal and environmental education is considered of great importance
in both countries. The Environmetal bus was demonstrated in Lithuanian cities during the
study visit because it was more efficient to show it to stakeholders directly. During the
study visit the bus gathered lots of interest both from children and decision-makers.
After the project ended,
actions to get similar kind of bus in Lithuania have been succesful and already now a
shared bus + driver work between the Lithuanian municipalities!
Environmental education in
Elbląg and iauliai
The Cities of Elbląg (POL) and
Šiauliai (LT) are
fairly similar in terms of size, population and history. This encouraged them to begin
preparations of the joint project called Environmental education. The goals of the
project were to involve inhabitants in environmental protection and research activities,
to disseminate information about environment to various groups of society, and to raise
environmental awareness, and to stimulate participation of the citizens in decision-making
on important issues.
Representatives of seven
different educational institutions of Šiauliai took part in the study visit to
Elbląg in
May, 2001. During the study visit they visited a waste water tratment plant and municipal
waste collecting and sorting grounds. They also had a change to take part in ecological
parliament of school children and spent a day in Green School in Piaski. Since then,
active co-operation has continued and both cities have learned a lot from each other. |
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Local Agenda 21 in Sundsvall and Sopot
Sundsvall has
good and long experiences of Local Agenda 21, whereas Sopot is quite in the start of the
process. This gave therefore the possibility to exchange useful experiences, ideas and
remarks. The co-operation also helped Sopot to avoid some mistakes which it might have
been heading for.
The benchmarking results showed
that Several of Sundsvall's projects can be implemented in Sopot. One of them is the Clean
Workplace! project. Another one, that has already been done is the Local Agenda 21
Calendar. This Calendar includes information on LA21 and sustainable development, events,
projects and meetings. |
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Municipalities of Bützow and
Sillamäe in Agenda 21 process
Sillamäe and Bützow are both cities where the Agenda 21 process is being strongly
integrated with the strategies and solving of the main problems of the city. The process
in Sillamäe is mainly directed to solve ecological problems and in Bützow a main
topic is the participation of youth in a sustainable development of the town.
The main aim of the project is
to proof the feasibility of the experience of Bützow in the field of participation
especially of children and youth to Sillamäe and to find ways to a city partnership on
the basis of youth and Agenda 21. During the study visit representatives from Bützow
visited Sillamäe in March 2001. As a result of the benchmarking, the cities exchanged
many good practices, and within the project also signed a co-operation agreement.
Air Quality Monitoring in
Cities of Turku & Panevėžys
| The basis for the participation of the City of Panevėžys in BCP project can be
found from the Municipal Environmental Audit (MEA) done in the city in 1999. In the MEA,
the air monitoring system was named as one of the audit targets and the strenght and
weaknesses of air quality monitoring were indicated.The benchmarking study visit was done to Turku and
the good experiences of Turku in air quality monitoring and quality assuarance of the
measuring were analysed from the point of view of implementing them in
Panevėžys. Experts
from Panevėžys visited some of the eight monitoring stations placed around Turku and
compiled together with their colleagues from Turku the feasibility report on how the
monitoring system could be implemented in Panevėžys.
Representives of Turku also visited
Panevėžys and discussed the development options also with the city leadership. As
Lithuania is in the EU Accession process, and critical decisions concerning air quality
monitoring are under process at state level, no technical implementation has taken place
yet as a result of the feasibility report. |
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