The Award Ceremony for the 2007 Ryutaro Hashimoto APFED Awards will be held on 24th August in the Sofitel Wanda Chengdu Hotel, Chengdu City, China. Dr. Uwe Weber, ELI’s Managing Director, will attend the Award Ceremony and present ELI’s heritage, our current activities and future vision, herewith sharing ELI’s successful experience in promoting energy efficient and sustainable lighting technologies with all participants.

Background: The initiative of Ryutaro Hashimoto APFED Awards aims at collecting lessons and experiences from innovative activities implemented in the Asia-Pacific region and promoting sustainable development, extract lessons learnt and share knowledge with other stakeholders concerned. The first awards programme was launched in 2006, and it received an overwhelming and encouraging response from all over the region. The second awards programme - the 2007 Ryutaro Hashimoto APFED Awards for Good Practices (GPs) intends to contribute further to the build up of knowledge and the dissemination of information on good practices.

The Asia-Pacific Forum for Environment and Development (APFED), a regional group of prominent experts officially launched at ECO ASIA (Environment Congress for Asia and the Pacific) in 2001, aims to address critical issues facing Asia and the Pacific region and to propose new models for equitable and sustainable development. "The 2007 Ryutaro Hashimoto APFED Awards for Good Practices" named in honour of the late Mr. Ryutaro Hashimoto, former Prime Minister of Japan and the first APFED Chair. The awards are given to organisations in recognition of practices that made have outstanding contributions in promoting environmental management and sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific. For more information about the awards programme, please visit the website: http://www.apfed.net/ki/awards/index.html.