Commission on Environment

Continuous work for a more sustainable Baltic Sea Region

Times for change in the En-vironmentand Sustainable Development Secretariat -this autumn two cooperation projects, coordinated by the UBC Commission on Environment, will be finalized. At the same time several new projects started during the last months and will be implemented during the next years.

The NEW BRIDGES' final conference 'Managing Urban-Rural Interaction for Quality of Life'will take place in Hamburg, Germany on 31 November - 1 December 2011, bringing together practitioners, politicians, researchers and all interested stakeholders to share leading experiences about the current situation and future challenges within the work on quality of life and urban-rural interaction.

More information and registration at www.urbanrural.net.

The first ever UBC online-conference 'European Climate Champions - Solutions for integrating climate change into local strategies' will conclude the last 3 years of activities of the CHAMP project on 14-15 December 2011. All UBC member cities and other actors interested in local climate change work are warmly welcome to take part in it from their desks!

More information: www.climatechampions.eu.

NEW PROJECTS IN UBC ENVCOM
During the last month several new projects started, dealing with a variety of topics. UBC EnvCom is either coordinating or participating as a partner in:
PRESTO (2011-2014) aims at combating eutrophication by improving wastewater treatment with technical studies and concrete investment to decrease nutrient load at the selected waste-water treatment plants from Belarus, latvia and lithuania as well as by increas­ing human competence.
NORDLEAD (2011-2012) will carry out a survey among nordic local authorities to find out success factors and support needs for cities to become climate leaders.
net-Com (2011-2013) aims at empowering local au­thorities to implement successfully their current (or future) Covenant of Mayors engagement and gives resources for developing the work of uBC as a support­ng structure. Within the project framework UBC Env­Com will initiate the Baltic Sea Region Covenant Club: targeted at current and future signatories. Thematic workshops will be organized free of charge for the club members. The project is coordinated by Energy Cities.
QUest (2011-2013) will develop an audit tool to evalu­ate and improve the quality of urban mobility policies in the European cities. in the end of QuEST, audited cities will receive a certificate which recognizes their efforts in sustainable mobility planning. QuEST has 19 partners and is coordinated by ligtermoet & Partners from the netherlands.