Wednesday, 25 January 2012 12:15
Alexander Hellquist and Martin Westin at the SUS-seminar.
-It is very important to create conditions for collaborative learning to overcome the usual borders between stakeholders. Together with concepts of reflexive governance and ecosystem services for poverty alleviation this kind of learning is at the very heart of the SUS-programme, says Martin Westin, coordinator at SWEDESD.
Martin and Alexander Hellquist at the Swedish International Centre of Education for Sustainable Development, SWEDESD, have both been deeply involved in the training programme Supporting Urban Sustainability or SUS which got started in 2011. During a seminar that was held on Tuesday January 24th at Gotland University, Martin and Alexander gave a brief introduction about the lessons learned and insights gained so far in the process. Currently six city teams from Grahamstown and Bloemfontein in South Africa, Dhaka in Bangladesh, Ahmedabad in India, Arusha in Tanzania and Malmö in Sweden are part of the programme. These teams are working with different inquiries related to urgent environmental, social and economic issues in each city with the overarching goal to enhance urban sustainability.
-We support strong local ownership as we see that this is a key to success within these kinds of programmes, says Alexander Hellquist.
This seminar was the first out of two about Supporting Urban Sustainability this week. On Thursday Alexander and Martin will visit Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the main funder of the programme, to present the results and discuss future activities.
Supporting Urban Sustainability (SUS) is offered by SWEDESD in close cooperation with organizations in South Asia, Southern Africa and Sweden.
Read more about the SUS-programme.
