(Bangkok, Thailand) – The project “Clean Air for Smaller Cities in the ASEAN Region” (CASC) implemented by German Technical Cooperation (GIZ) held the regional closing workshop on 23 November 2015 at the United Nations Conference Center in Bangkok, Thailand.

The workshop provided an opportunity for the CASC project partners at national and city levels to disseminate outputs from the cities Clean Air Plans (CAPs), to share implementation best practices, and to reflect on how CAP planning and activities can integrate with cities’ climate change mitigation strategies including the future harmonisation of ASEAN’s strategy on environmentally sustainable cities, including clean air.

Mayors of selected pilot cities presented their CAPs, and together with air quality management and climate change mitigation specialists, and stakeholders, discussed the regional project phase-out and the cities’ capacity in refining and implementing them beyond 2015. After seven years of activities, CASC will phase out at the end of the year.

Participants of the workshop were representatives from all project pilot cities and respective national governments, the ASEAN Secretariat, the Municipal League of Thailand, international development agencies, GIZ, and Clean Air Asia (CAA), one of the leading partners in anchoring CASC project results in Asia including serving as a regional training hub for the continuation of activities for CAPs in cities.

“Through the GIZ CASC program, Clean Air Asia has been able to ramp up its efforts in capacity building. We now have a truly replicable training methodology, the Train for Clean Air (T4CA) program that allows for a systematic development of training programs for cities. We are proud of the six T4CA courses that have been developed covering topics and themes that are the priority areas for capacity building that our countries and cities need. We are also developing more training courses to meet the needs of cities. As the regional training hub, Clean Air Asia will continue to engage more partners to reach more than 1000 cities that are growing fast in this region,” says Glynda Bathan, Deputy Executive Director of Clean Air Asia.

The CASC is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by GIZ in cooperation with the ASEAN Secretariat. CASC is part of the ASEAN-German Technical Cooperation Programme ‘Cities, Environment and Transport’. More project information is available at http://www.CitiesforCleanAir.org.

For more information, please contact:

Tanya Gaurano
Environment Researcher
Clean Air Asia
Tanya.Gaurano@cleanairasia.org