I’m happy to communicate that yesterday, 2009/08/27, the city council of the Borough of Teo, in Galicia (NW Spain), passed a resolution acknowledging peak oil. As far as we know it’s the second Spanish local authority in doing so after La Palma in Canary Islands in 2007.
There’s still no official information in its website, but we were there yesterday among the audience and have made a post on it in our association’s blog: http://vesperadenada.org/2009/08/27/o-concello-de-teo-reconece-a-gravida…
It was presented by BNG (Galician Nationalist Bloc) and was passed with support from PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the same in the Spanish Government):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloque_Nacionalista_Galego
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Socialist_Workers’_Party
Here you have some information in English about the Borough (official website): http://www.concellodeteo.com/?lg=ing
and announcement about the discussion of the resolution:
http://www.concellodeteo.com/actualidade/nova.php?id=345&lg=gal (in Galician language)
This is the Google map link for the Borough Council:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=a+ramallosa,…
Here’s an approximate translation of title and final practical decisions adpoted by this Borough Council (sorry if there’s some wrong English terms):
Resolution on Peak Oil in the Borough of Teo and about our need for council measures to control energy consumption and to promote renewable energy use
(This follows an intro and a long list of considerations; and then come the practical decisions)
– To acknowledge as an administration that peak oil is a serious question and that we need to put in action measures to make our borough more resilient to its consequences, in social, economic and public services areas.
– To make necessary contacts in order to establish a technical committee on this subject, in collaboration with the council environmental department, so it can develop a vulnerability study for all aspects of our borough’s life in face of this threat, and to collaborate with resources available from this council to the development of this study.
– To analyze if measures applied in other places of the world by councils of analogous characteristics are applicable to ours.
– To integrate all these actions in a Local Energy Transition Plan which aims to avoid as far as we can all impacts of a lack of cheap oil to our citizens, local companies and our local administration, assessing and reducing our dependency on oil in all areas, mainly in food, and walking steadily towards a sustainable local economy.
– To inform our citizens about this issue and also our local companies, and to invite them to participate in the development of that Plan.
– To communicate our resolution to all other Galician councils through FEGAMP (Galician Federation of Municipalities and Provinces) inviting them to adopt similar measures and to cooperate in adopting common strategies at Galician level.
– To ask from Galician and Spaniard parliaments the establishment of multidisciplinary task forces to assess vulnerability at those levels and to design responses as soon as possible, as it’s been done in other countries like Sweden, Ireland, Scotland and Australia.
