Summary for the Dogme 2000 - Life meeting, 9-11 May, 2005
The 9. of May
Introduction of the municipality of Albertslund
Albertslund is a suburb to Copenhagen located 15 km west of central Copenhagen. The municipality is quite new and its history as a city begins in the early sixties. Today we have 12.000 households and 30.000 residents. Albertslund occupies an area of 23 square kilometres.
The city is build as a much planed town from the early sixties to early seventies. And the residents build the city with a high level of activity, and made a strong tradition of involvement and dialogue with residents and business.
Today Albertslund have a strong political focus on tree areas; Children, Culture and Environment.
The environmental work in Albertslund
Albertslund has worked whit environmental issues in a number of years. From the early eighties were the households started to put up meters for the district heat supply, over the early nineties were we began with green accounts in 1992 and made our first Agenda 21 in 1994.
Today we still work with green accounts – a large one for the whole city – but also “a small green account for every household area - and agenda 21.
The work with environmental issues has broadened out in many different directions the most important ones are:
– environmental management systems
We have a goal to have a EMAS system in every part of our administration – covering institutions, schools, technical department even the mayors office. We are about half way to achieve our goal which we aim to reach in late 2007.
– Dogma 2000 – for municipalities and environment
Ambitious politicians made in 2000 the Dogma document witch still is a drive to the environmental work in Albertslund. We try to active the Dogma goals and to develop the Dogma 2000 concept.
Introduction of the municipality of Ballerup
The municipality of Ballerup is a suburb located 15 km from the centre of Copenhagen. The municipality has app. 47.000 inhabitants.
The municipality provide a high standard of services towards both corporations and citizens. The municipality operates 10 schools, over 100 day-care centres, several sports facilities, a music school and lots of other services for the whole family.
The municipality is a traffic centre in greater Copenhagen with five train stations, several high ways and many bus lines.
Ballerup is a green municipality located on the border between city and the countryside. In the municipality has open landscapes and many of the residential areas are located in close contact with nature.
The Green Office is concerned with:
· Local Agenda 21
· Environmental projects in public administration, schools, day-care centres and other institutions in the municipality
· Dogme 2000
Examples on projects in the Green Office:
Introduction of the municipality of Frederivcia
One glance at the map is enough to establish Fredericia's central location in Denmark. Motorways, main roads and railways meet up. Fredericia is located literally at the centre of Denmark’s largest crossroad. Fredericia is also a railway junction for the reequipping of companies, and is undisputedly Denmark’s largest freight harbour.
The venerable fortified town of Fredericia on the shores of the Little Belt, with its chessboard of completely straight streets surrounded by imposing, well preserved ramparts, offers a view of the bridges over the Little Belt that connect Jutland to the island of Funen.
Inhabitant’s total: 50.000
City Fredericia: 27.000
Area (km2) 134, 46
The 21 members of the Town Council in Fredericia are elected for the period from January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2005
History
King Frederick the Third founded the fortified town of Fredericia in 1650 with completely straight streets at right angles to each other and protected by extensive ramparts. The town was planned by the renowned King Christian the Fourth. He desired an effective fortress against enemies from the south, but died before the work could begin. Therefore, it was his son, Frederick the Third, who planned and established the fortress.
Waste management
Every household grades its own waste into clothes, paper, cardboard, plastic cans, glass and iron, metal and expanded polystyrene. Moreover, three out of four homeowners compost their green waste.
Wastewater treatment
Denmark's second largest central treatment plant for wastewater is located in Fredericia. Its capacity is due to the fact that all companies in the region are connected to the plant, which has an environmental certification as one of the only plants in the world. This helps improve water quality in the Little Belt.
Action plan or Local Agenda 21 in 1996
Fredericia has a tradition of giving a high priority to environmental projects, especially projects which involve our citizens playing an active role. A total of about fifteen project groups are continuously working to create sustainable development within various areas, and much has been achieved. A total environmental policy was adopted in 2004.
Introduction of the municipality of Herning
Herning is a young city compared to many other cities in Jylland. Herning arose around the railroad, in 1913 6.000 people were living in Herning, now it is 60.000 people. Herning is the center for west Jylland and for the middle of Jylland. People come here to shop, to go to the theatre, to go to business-schools and so on.
Building new highways have meant that a lot of new lakes have arisen and the municipality has made a green masterplan for this. In some of the lakes it is possible to swim.
75% of the inhabitants lives in the city, it means that there is a lot of open land in Herning, which is used for farming (pigs, cows and potatoes).
The mayor in Herning is from Venstre a liberal parti in Denmark.
The biggest congress center in Scandinavien is located in Herning and it attracks 1 mio. people each year.
For many years Herning has worked with pilotprojects concerning green enegi. And Herning was among the six green pilotmunicipalities which later turned out to be the “Green City Denmark”
Introduction of the municipality of Copenhagen
Copenhagen is 90 km2 and there are 500.000 inhabitants in the municipality. During the last 10-20 years the heavy industry has moved out and Copenhagen is now dominated of commercial and light industry, services and public administration.
The industry which is still here is very well regulated and that is one of the reasons why the water quality in the habour is now so good that you actual can swim in it.
Then all the industry moved out of the city there were a very big challenge in investigating and clean up all the abandoned industrial sites.
In Copenhagen there is a city council with 55 members. Then there are seven Committees, and among them the Energy, Water and Environment Committee. This Committee has a mayor from the social democrats.
Introduction of the municipality of Neumünster
We got an introduction to the municipality and to how the energy supplies work. In Neumünster they have worked much with natural gas for cars.
Introduction of the municipality of Silauliai
We saw a movie that described the city both geografical and cultural. We heard that Siauliai have been working with pollutionproblems in a big lake to try to improve the recreational value. They have also a big challenge in cleaning up on a former military area.
Introduction to Dogme 2000 and Life
Dogme 2000 is a binding environmental cooperation between cities with ambitions and a environmental management system for the entire city. Five Danish cities are a member of the cooperation: Albertslund, Ballerup, Fredericia, Herning and Copenhagen. One of the things that is very important is that there is a political accept of the Dogme 2000 document.
In Dogme there is a Steering committee a directors group and working groups.
In Dogme commitments and action is in focus. There are three criteria which you are obliged to work with. And an external audit must show some progress in the municipalities work with the criteria. The three criteria are:
Monitor and measure
Agenda 21 plan
Environmental work must be anchored
In the Life project we will strengthening some of the elements in Dogme 2000:
The outcome of Life will be:
A new tested model for environmental management system for a city, including visions, indicators, targets and audit system.
LIFE project”Dissemination”
We have elaborated a Dogme-handbook targeted at other Danish/European municipalities wishing to apply the Dogme-model in their daily environmental work.
We have disseminated the project’s results and knowledge of the “Dogme 2000”-model to municipalities in Denmark and the rest of Europe.
Activities and methods
The aim of the task is to gather all knowledge, experiences, concrete tools and documents in relation to the use of the “Dogme 2000”-model in a handbook. The handbook will contain the concrete models produced during the project period. The handbook will include: Introduction to “Dogme 2000”.
The following activities concern the dissemination of the project’s results:
1. Establishment of a group of external partners contributing to the development of the technical part of the project.
2. Establishment of a project website on the existing Dogme-website.
3. Presentation of results from the project and the Dogme-model in relation to participation in national and international city networks.
4. Publishing of a booklet containing information on the project and “Dogme 2000”.
5. Mini-seminar in Brussels where the European Commission, the European Environment Agency.
6. A final meeting in Brussels with the European Commission.
7. Publishing of the handbook.
8. Final conference where the results from the project are presented for discussion in a range of workshops.
LIFE project “ anchoring”
The aim of the project is:
To gather experiences of tools for anchoring the environmental work
To present the experiences in a catalogue of ideas
To use the experiences from the project to specify the Dogme-models goal of “anchoring the environmental work”
The target groups for the project are:
Anchoring are:
When experiences and knowledge from projects, campaign of information and other activities effect the participants acts, thoughts and practise
And/or
When the effects spread into groups, working procedure etc. by the participants
Examples of tools for anchoring:
LIFE project “ audit”
Why audit at all? It helps us to ensure that progress is being made with the Dogme work at the internal municipal level. It is our experience that it gives credibility and that politicians are interested in the annual result off the audit.
Every year the eksternal auditors the interviews represents all segments of the hierarchy, including topmanagment and politicians.
The new audit model shall include experiences from previous audits, and shall be able to contain both shape and content, such as the ongoing work with EMAS at city level, the new indicators, anchorage tools.
The 10. of May
LIFE project “ green accounts”
In the Dogme Life green account project group they will develop a new model for the municipalities green accounts. They have pointed out the themes that will characterize a sustainable municipality. They have also for each theme determined some objectives that the municipalities should work towards. For each objective there should be connected indicators to show how far we are from achieving the objectives.
LIFE project “Chemical plan”
In the Dogme Life chemicalproject group we must develop a plan with concrete tools for the municipalities activities concerning reduction of chemical use.
The target group is:
We are going to test minimum five tools on various areas of activity and target groups.
Work shop Green accounts
Participants in the workshop:
Arne Lewandowski, Neumünster
Zydrone Staniene, Siauliai
Vitalija Peleniene, Siauliai
Henriette Lentz, Green Accounts project group
Hanne Dahl, Green Accounts project group
Jesper Thomsen, Green accounts group
Hanne Ellgaard, Dissemintion project group
Trine Jacobsen, Project sectary
The Green acount model as it is now was explained by the projectgroup. There where some discussions about the level of visions/objectives and the understanding of the model.
Neumünster said that they don´t have green accounts now, but they want to work with it. They have been involved in an EU project with among others the county of Fyn in Denmark, and this project involved test of some environmental indicators, but at a more regional level, and not just confined to the municipality level. Neumünster also presented some environmental indicators for the municipality as an enterprice. The work on Agenda21 is not that highlighted in Neumünster, and local centers are closing down. The environmental awareness of the people in Germany is generally high, and this was explained as the result of the environmental focus brought by especially the Green Party in the period from 1970´ties and on.
Siauliai don´t work with green accounts at the moment. But they have an EMAS at city-level, and they handed out a report with both indicators and stories about how environmental work is carried out (descriebed projects and more). A project about the development of lake and its surroundings was presented at the meeting. This project is based on sustainability in the environmental sense, and in the sense of economically and social aspects. It was very interesting to hear about.
It was discussed how Neumünster and Siauliai could play a role in the testing of indicators in the model for green accounts. Neumünster could perhaps test indicators in the areas Air Pollution (particles from traffic was mentioned) and Energi. For Siauliai the areas could be Nature and Earth and Groundwater.
It was decided that the two municipalities is to be kept informed about the progress of the development of the model, and that they shall be kept closely informed about the work on indicators on the areas mentioned above.
Work shop Chemicals
Participants in the workshop:
Gerd Sigel, Neumünster
Romaldas Semeta, Siauliai
Gunver Heidemann, Chemical project
Hasse Højmark, Chemical project
Greta Nedergaard, Dissemination project
Susanne Boiesen Petersen, Dissemination project
In the chemical workshop the two municipalities of Neumünster and Siauliai gave some good input to the Dogme-Life-chemical-group according the future work with the chemical plan. We had some specific discussions about wast treatment, toys, medicine in sludge, electronics, PVC and paints. The discussion made it clear, that different municipalities are in different levels and is faceing different environmental problems. It gave a good perspective when talking of "lowering the chemical pressure"!.
The conclusion on the workshop was, that the chemical-group will send the catalog of ideas (tools) for reducing the chemical pressure to both the municipalities when the group have translated the catalog into english. Further more we agreed on, that the chemical group will consider if some of the tools with succes can be tested in one or both the municipalities.
The 11. of May
Evaluation
We made an evaluation by looking at the goals for the seminar, and then discuss whether we had succeed or not.
Goals for the seminar
Getting to know:
Introduction to;
The participants from Siauliai and Neumünster both found that the materials they had received before the meeting was informing and sufficient.
The participants found that the meeting was well organized and that there had been good possibilities to exchange information also during the evening arrangements.
Wishes for the next meeting: