The association

The goal of the Belgian Association of Eco-counsellors (ABECE) is to promote, represent and enrich the eco-counsellor job. For this the ABECE organises and instigates information and experiences exchange between its members and contribute to the training of eco-counsellors. Each year, different activities are organised like seminars, , visits of companies, practical workshops, publications and working groups.

The association leads also, with some partners, some environmental eco-counselling projects and missions if they have an innovative and proactive approach and enrich or broadern the eco-counsellors job.

The association gathers the Belgian professionals in environmental advice and counselling (mainly eco-counsellors), to further the recognition of this job profile and to be the link with their equals in the other countries.

The job

With the environmental preoccupation appears a necessity of contact between the citizens, the socio-economical actors, the academic filed and the politics. In order to answer to this need, the eco-counsellor job was developed in the years 1987 and 1988, during the European Environmental year.

The eco-counsellor is a high level generalist who gathers environmental and communication skills. As an example, the eco-counsellor's job can consist in helping the decision making process of policies and action plans, to assure communication and mediation between the interested parties and to be the a change agent. He assists the dialogue and the network setting between the different environmental actors and participates to the structures and mentalities changes. He is also a moderator. The eco-counsellor is a real transversal agent because his day-to-day actions need the collaboration and the competences of the others departments and services.

Fields of competences

The eco-counsellor has got several fields of competences that can be grouped in three types of functions:

• Environmental advisor and counselling
• Interface between the politics, the industry and the population
• Change agent (information, awareness raising, capacity building, training and innovation)

The people targeted by the eco-counsellor are in one hand the institution or organisation (company, local authority, public administration, NGO) where he works (internal actions) and, in the other hand, the different environmental actors, principally the citizens, the economical and political actors, the administrations and the NGOs (external actions).

His actions are related to the major part of the sustainable development topics, like:

• Environmental action plans (waste plan, water sewage, noise plan, river contracts, PFDD,…)
• Environmental management systems (EMAS, ISO 14.001, …)
• Clean technologies
• Eco-consumption
• Mediation and management of conflicts
• Environmental permits and legislation
• Nature conservation, biodiversity and natural parks
• Awareness raising, capacity building and training of the employees about environmental matters and behaviours
• National, regional and local environmental strategic and spatial planning
• Mobility
• Rational use of energy and renewable energies
• Waste management and prevention
• Noise reduction
• Eco-labels
• Air pollution
• Environmental education
• Health and environment
• Social economy