Her Excellency Inger Ulvedt, Swedish ambassador to the Philippines graced the final conference of the ecoBudget-Asia Project, which was attended by not less than a hundred participants from the European Union, Sweden, Italy, India, Thailand, and the Philippines last October15 to 16, at the Bohol Beach Club in Panglao, Bohol.
The conference with the theme, “ecoBudget: An Instrument to Good Local Resource Management and Governance,” which was organized by the Provincial Planning and Development Office (PPDO) of the Provincial Government of BOhol, convened the ecoBudget-Asia Project Consurtium comprised of the cities of Bologna (Italy), Guntur, (India), Vaxjo (Sweden), and the Province of Bohol through the municipality of Tubigon. The four cities and municipalities together with international experts on sustainability management tools shared their experiences, achievements, and impacts in using the ecoBudget as a tool for resource management and governance.
For the part of Bohol, the Municipality of Tubigon shared their experiences with the program, which started in April 2005 after having been chosen through a consultative meeting involving representatives from 14 municipalities from the Provincial Government of Bohol, Non-Government Organizations, and the Academe.
Among the distinguished guests welcomed by Gov. Erico B. Aumentado during the opening ceremonies include: Mayor Khanna Nagaraju of Guntur, India, Andrea Burzacchini of ICLEI-Europe, Pamela Lama, the commissioner of Vaxjo, Sweden, Anders Franzen, the Development Manager of Vaxjo, Sweden, Emani Kumar and Vic Acquitania of ICLEI-Southeast Asia as well as the different mayors and municipal planning and development officers of the different towns in Bohol, which are potential implementers of the ecoBudget.
ecoBudget is an environmental management system developed by the International Council for Local Environment Initiatives or ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability and is aimed to be utilized by local governments. The system follows the financial budgeting procedure and allows local authorities to keep track with its environmental spending within an environmental budget. It does not, however, assign monetary value to environment but allows quantitative long term and annual targets that the local council may ratify, which in turn may influence the direction of local environment policies and programs. With an environmental master budget, targets are oriented toward sustainable management of the environmental resources of the municipal territory. The ecoBudget-Asia is a project co-funded by the European Union’s Asia Urbs programme and coordinated by the Municipality of Bologna. It aims to transfer the knowledge and experiences of eco-Budget in European cities and municipalities to their Asian counterparts.
