Climate Change
How European Consumer Co-operatives get concrete about Climate Change
Climate Change is one of greatest challenge humanity will face during the 21st century. It is a problem that affects us all and that has a global dimension. Immediate action is necessary to try to stop the devastating effects of past policies and actions that could irreparably harm the environment. Consumer co-operatives, as responsible economic and social actors, have and are ready to play a fundamental role. They are enterprises which act according to values and principles. They have at the same time an international vision and a local focus, which puts them in a privileged place to establish sustainable practices and policies.
Euro Coop therefore decided to take up the challenge. We know that alone we cannot solve this problem but we also know that we have a responsibility to our members and to society to be fully engaged and to deliver to the best of our ability concrete results. For this purpose, we started by organising in June 2007 a major European Conference entitled "Climate Change: The major challenge of the 21st century? Maximising the response of consumer co-operatives", which resulted in a fruitful and lively debate. As a follow-up to this Conference, the Euro Coop General Assembly called on and obtained by the European consumer co-operative movement to recognise that Climate Change is one of the greatest emergencies of our time and that it is of the utmost importance to act with urgency. On that occasion, a document stating concrete engagements undertaken by the European Consumer Co-operative movement has been adopted. Please find it also at the link here.
Following-up to this move, in early 2009 Euro Coop organised the Conference “Time to Commit! Consumer Cooperatives Actions against Climate Change”, which saw the participation of EU Institutions’ representatives as well as other relevant stakeholders of the EU arena. In such occasion, Euro Coop launched the project “Climate Change and Consumer Cooperatives: Taking the Challenge Forward”, a work which was finalised and followed-up by the Euro Coop Environmental Policy Working Group.
Thanks to this project, Euro Coop became in late 2009 Official Partner of the Sustainable Energy Europe Campaign (SEEC), a European Commission’s initiative conceived in the framework of the Intelligent Energy Europe programme. Since 2009, Euro Coop is also engaged in a collaboration with the Co-operatives Europe initiative “ACT!”, aimed at enhancing all co-operative sectors’ efforts in the fight against Climate Change.
In late 2010, Euro Coop launched the first follow-up report to the project: “Climate Change and Consumer Cooperatives: Taking the Challenge Forward” : a further move which shows the ongoing progress in consumer co-operatives’ commitment to tackle the Climate Change threat.
Against this background, Euro Coop collaborates since 2008 with the Belgian NGO initiative “CompenCO2” to offset the CO2 produced by its staff when travelling. Indeed cap and trade programs are seen by Euro Coop as last-step initiatives because reducing CO2 emissions still remains the ultimate objective. Yet this engagement adds to the valuable and day-to-day work carried out by consumer co-operatives across Europe and represents another initiative to head towards a truly sustainable economy and society.