The fifth city workshop of the Clean Air Initiative in Latin American Cities was held in Santiago de Chile on October 24-26, 2000, in partnership
between Comisión Nacional del Medio Ambiente (CONAMA) Región Metropolitana and the Clean Air Initiative. It was attended by more than 400 participants.

The agenda was organized around three core themes and a series of minicourses. The core themes were (i) air quality action plans and strategies to control atmospheric pollution, with case studies from
European and North American cities; (ii) clean technologies and improved fuels and emissions control in the transport and industry sectors; and (iii) the achievements or lessons of the previous action plan and the proposed decontamination plan for the metropolitan area of Santiago. The topics covered by the minicourses were:

• Emissions controls in the industrial sector
• Urban planning, transport, and air quality
• Integrated strategies for local and global control of atmospheric pollutants
• Pollution prevention through education and public participation
  Health impacts from air pollution
• Air quality standards.

In addition, field trips to specific locations relevant to the sessions were carried out on two days of the workshop, with substantial participation. The sites selected for the field visits were the Center of Control and Vehicle Certification of the Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications, the Green Building System, and the National Center for the Environment (CENMA). A natural gas-powered bus, provided by Mercedes Benz, transported participants to these locations.

The Santiago workshop was successful both for the local organizers and for the participating cities. It helped catalyze a dialogue between transport and environmental authorities, now in the process of revising key regulatory aspects of urban bus concessions. It provided CONAMA an opportunity to engage the media in a detailed description of achievements to date and of the new directions of Santiago's Air Quality Management
Action Plan (see box 1). For the participating cities, this workshop served as a hands-on training opportunity in a number of technical areas related to air quality management.