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England October 22-26 2008
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Joint action since 1993

• Six Municipalities in the North of Sweden
• Bjurholm
• Nordmaling
• Robertsfors
• Umeå
• Vindeln
• Vännäs

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An alliance for growth

• high quality of community services
• improve the efficiency of municipal activities
• offer services and facilities at lower cost

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Agreement

• Positive development for one municipality is a
  positive development for all
• Establishment of new business enterprises should
  be done without conflict
• Job opportunities should be spread throughout the
  region
• Increased freedom of choice and better service
  to inhabitants

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Aims

• Better efficiency in the public sector through
  co-ordination
• Work together for development of the region
• The organisation must be based upon democratic
  principles

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Functional region

• One labour market region
• 142,000 inhabitants
• 5,000 people commute every day
• Maximum of 45 minutes by car from Umeå to the
  other municipal centres
• 16,000 business enterprises

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Organisation

• Council of the Region - mayors and vice
  mayors
• Heads of Municipalities - operative steering
  committee
• Head of office - prepares the agenda,
  carries out decisions, finances and
  administration
• 20 Thematic Committees - 100 representatives
  from all six municipalities

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Committees

• Commercial and industrial life
• Education
• Technique
• Planning
• Tourism
• Staff
• IT

• Environment
• Public transportation
• Purchase/procurement
• Information
• Waste management
• Elderly care

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Examples of successful co-operation

• They all started as projects...
• Joint organisation of tourism
• Joint refugee reception
• Joint library system - United Nations Public
  Service Award in 2008 for best innovation in
  the public sector

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www.minabibliotek.se

• Minabibliotek.se is the result of many years
• of developmental work
• Participatory Democracy
• Part of the European Capital of Culture venture
• A joint regional web site

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Umeå Region Libraries Strategy for sustainable
development

• The work of the libraries relate to all ten
  themes of the Aalborg Commitments and can be
  described from all three perspectives of a
  sustainable development, social, economic and
  ecological.
• Results
• Better work environment
• Innovative product development
• Competence development
• Improved professionality
• National and international recognition

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Umeå Region Public libraries Strategy for
sustainable development

• Social sustainability mission
• Spread culture
• Accessible source of information
• Accessible meeting place.
• Economic sustainability mission
• Increased productivity by sharing costs and
  resources.
• Create an infrastructure for common investments
  (servers, library data systems)
• Financial stability through joint procurements
  and implementation of Umeå region funding models
  and cost distribution
• Ecological sustainability mission
• Re-using resources by borrowing books
• Increasing digitalisation of services all
  contributes to a better environment
• From one tree up to 15000 A4 sheets or 100-150
  books can be made

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Sustainable Umeå Region

• Albert Edman, Project leader

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Sustainable Umeå Region

• Project purpose
• Joint regional management system
• Sustainable urban-rural development in functional
  labour market region.  
• Starting points
• Sustainable development is a leadership issue
• Regional growth/development is strengthened by
  broad sustainable development perspective
• Bottom-up perspective with strong local
  involvement. 
• Process
• Based on Aalborg commitments process.
• Evaluate Aalborg process as a tool from a
  functional region perspective.
• Cooperation Umeå region and Västerbotten Regional
  Council

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Aalborg Commitments?

• EU strategy for sustainable development (2006)
• Municipalities, cities and towns should be
  invited to sign and implement the Aalborg
  Commitments. Networks at different levels should
  support these activities.
• European Urban Conference 2004 in Aalborg,
  Denmark
• More than 500 local and regional signatories in
  Europe

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THE AALBORG COMMITMENTS 50 commitments in 10
thematic areas

• 1 GOVERNANCE
• 2 LOCAL MANAGEMENT TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY
• 3 NATURAL COMMON GOODS
• 4 RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION AND LIFESTYLE CHOICES
• 5 PLANNING AND DESIGN
• 6 BETTER MOBILITY, LESS TRAFFIC
• 7 LOCAL ACTION FOR HEALTH
• 8 VIBRANT AND SUSTAINABLE LOCAL ECONOMY
• 9 SOCIAL EQUITY AND JUSTICE
• 10 LOCAL TO GLOBAL

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BETTER MOBILITY, LESS TRAFFIC

• We recognise the interdependence of transport,
  health and
• environment and are committed to strongly
  promoting
• sustainable mobility choices.
• We will therefore work to
• 1. reduce the necessity for private motorised
  transport and promote attractive alternatives
  accessible to all.
• 2. increase the share of journeys made by public
  transport, on foot and by bicycle.
• 3. encourage transition to low-emission
  vehicles.
• 4. develop an integrated and sustainable urban
  mobility plan.
• 5. reduce the impact of transport on the
  environment and public health.

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Expected results

• Local and regional baseline review
• Six local action plans
• Regional framework with monitoring review system
• Systematic approach to take strategy into
  targeted action, new thematic sustainable
  networks
• New thematic sustainable development projects,
  putting innovative ideas into practice

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Local and regional baseline review

• Strengths
• 20 thematic committees in a stable network
  creating bottom-up approach developing the region
• Well established political co-operation in the
  region
• Examples
• Umeå region public libraries
• Wind power visualization-Google earth
• District heating (Cooling!) region
• BioFuel Region
• Gender equal and sustainable region
• Umeå European Capital of Culture 2014

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Challenges

• How connect our functional region sustainably?
• Promoting health on equal terms
• Bench-marking with others
• Common vision for sustainable growth
• Procurement of local and regional products
• Climate and energy strategy for the region

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Common wind energy plan for the Umeå RegionUsing
Google Earth to visualize effects
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District heating (cooling) region

• All six municipalities in the region have
  district heating systems
• More than 70 of the total indoor area in Umeå
• Oil boilers replaced and the amount of
  electricity used for heating reduced.
• Dåva combined heat and power plant
• One of the worlds most energy effective and
  environmentally adapted waste-fuelled plants.
• Combination of innovative solutions recover
  almost entire energy value of the fuel.
• District cooling
• Absorption refrigerators produce district
  cooling, driven by district heating

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A region that leads the world in biofuels

The vision To be a world-leading region in
sustainable transport based on biofuels and
bioproducts from renewable rawmaterials.
Therefore we focus on being in the forefront of
societal change, industrial and regional
development, and to increase the availability of
renewable raw materials
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Gender equal, sustainable region

• Develop common knowledge platform on gender
  equality in the region
• Develop management system to ensure gender equal
  service to citizens
• Cooperation and knowledge ? gender equal,
  sustainable region
• Facts about the Umeå region
• European Football Champions 2003, 2004, finalists
  2002, 2007, 2008
• Umeå University Center for Gender studies is
  National center of excellence
• Umeå region has highest of paternal leave days
  in Sweden

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• Northern curiosity and passion the art of
  Co-creation
• Mission
• Co-creating sustainability (Stay cool!)

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• Thank You!
• Questions?