Environmental Education in Ponferrada

An environmental education campaign was undertaken in Ponferrada (Spain) to educate its 65,000 inhabitants on protecting the environment and quality of life.

Called ‘Presume de ciudad, Ponferrada Limpio’, the environmental education campaign was focused on sustainable urban mobility, reducing and recycling waste, saving water and energy, and environmentally-aware consumption.

The objectives were to:

1. Improve knowledge of local environmental problems.
2. Promote the active participation of society in collective issues, bolstering a sense of shared responsibility towards the environment.
3. Extend the practice of environmental education to the community as a whole and to all social, cultural and work contexts in which it can be applied.

Wanting to work with all sectors of Ponferrada’s population, the Campaign was run through ads in the media, brochures and handouts, workshops, forums – all aimed at specific sector groups. There were even activities and information aimed directly at local schools.

ICLEI’s Local Agenda 21 (LA21) Campaign promotes a participatory, long-term, strategic planning process that supports local governance by identifying local sustainability priorities and mobilizing local governments and their citizens to implement long-term action plans that address these sustainable priorities. Using the LA21 approach of participatory sustainable development planning, ICLEI aims to assist local authorities to move beyond general sustainable development planning and to apply this approach in tackling areas of priority concern. For more information, please visit www.iclei.org/la21.

Ponferrada is one of 159 local governments in Europe that are currently Members of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. For more information on ICLEI and its operations in Europe in particular, please visit www.iclei.org/europe.

Source: ‘SMILE Project’, European Commission Directorate-General for Energy and Transport, 22 December 2006.