I am pleased to welcome you to the website of the Department of the Environment and Housing, a tool aimed at bringing the Administration task closer to the citizens we work for, as well as zooming in our land and identifying its potentialities. You are more than welcome to visit our site and get to know at first hand the initiatives that are being developed by our Department.

We work according to the objectives set in the programme of L’Entesa Nacional de Progrés (National Agreement for Progress). Among its aims is to continue extending the concept of sustainability in our government action. We must apply this concept transversely in the actions aimed at preserving the environment and the economic activities, with the widest social cohesion.

One of the challenges we face is to encourage in an effective and integrating manner the policies of the several environmental fields, such as water, waste or air pollution. We believe that land, water and energy need joint solutions in order to reduce the ecological footprint of human activity and favour a more sustainable development.

Housing is, beyond any doubt, one of the decisive factors to achieve social cohesion. For several years now, people have seen there is another way of approaching housing policies. One of our priorities is to facilitate the right to housing for young people, citizens with low income and other groups in risk of social exclusion. In this respect, we must claim the need that the Parliament of Catalonia passes the new Law on the right to housing, as an essential tool for developing housing policies.

In this period of government, the Department has taken on new competences in order to attain the established objectives. That is how we are to foster the creation of the Office against Climate Change, that will carry out the Catalan strategy to combat climate change from an interdepartmental point of view. We will promote energy efficiency and saving by means of a firm investment for the development and implementation of renewable energies and the gradual substitution of the least clean energies, guaranteeing the supply according to real needs. Finally, the co-presidency of the Catalan Land Institute will help us promote more residential ground by public housing promotion.

On behalf of myself and all the people working for the Department of the Environment and Housing, I would like to invite you to take part in the visit and development of this website. Please send us your opinions, proposals, suggestions that may help us to define for Catalonia the new programme of environmental sustainability and social cohesion applied to housing, and to implement it successfully, using all the resources the information society affords us.