The training webinar was held from 27 October – 3 November for government officials from Mexico City, Lima, Santiago and Bogotá, cities where Swisscontact implements the CALAC+ programme.

In the three years CALAC+ has been working, there has been an increase in interest and knowledge regarding machinery and emissions. The webinar began by showing a video that summarized the capacity-building and discussions the programme facilitates to achieve its vision of healthier cities that reduce their emissions of short-lived climate pollutants (such as black carbon), atmospheric gases and greenhouse gases (GHG), by promoting a shift towards soot-free and low-carbon urban buses and off-road machinery.

Martin Jaggi welcomed participants, saying “This south-south knowledge exchange is very important for SDC.  It is in our cooperation DNA, we give it a lot of support, and believe it is a great opportunity for the countries participating in the programme to share data and experience, including how they regulate new heavy machinery“.

Adrián Montalvo addressed the audience, thanking everyone for their participation in “this webinar, which is a complement to the seminar in Chile, which sparked a very positive discussion that is already bearing fruit in terms of steps on the issue of mobile highway machinery, taking inventories, calculating emissions and encouraging plans that could reduce them“, he said.

The panel on the importance of off-road machinery was followed by presentations from government representatives from Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru. The Chilean Ministry of the Environment’s Head of Regulation of Mobile Sources stressed that as regulation has led to a gradual reduction in emissions from on-road vehicles, it has become increasingly evident the emissions from off-road vehicles (machinery) need to be regulated.

These are the videos that summarise the four tools developed to turn emission calculation results into practical policy scenarios which consider impact on costs and benefits to the environment and on human health.