The Major Challenge of the 21st Century?

The conference Climate Change: The Major Challenge of the 21st Century? Maximising the response of consumer co-operatives, was held in Brussels on 28 June 2007 in the European Economic and Social Committee. The event was organised by EURO COOP, the European Community of Consumer Co-operatives.

Climate change is one of the greatest economic, social and political issues of our time. It will affect not only us, but future generations and it is of the utmost importance to act now to fight the causes and adapt to the dramatic changes we will see in the world around us.

As responsible actors of the European social and economic world, consumer co-operatives have identified in fighting climate change one of their shared priorities and this conference means a further commitment to take up the challenge. For many years EURO COOP and its members have been calling for effective and demanding environmental policies to be placed high on the agenda of the EU and the Member States in order to make sure that all initiatives aimed at promoting the care of the environment enjoyed appropriate support and promotion.

With this conference, therefore, EURO COOP intended to bring together representatives of the consumer co-operative movement and other European stakeholders with a view to mapping out the state-of-the-art of EU policy on Climate Change and to gather the most significant contributions from the European consumer co-operative movement in order to give new impetus to the debate.

For further information, please refer to Rosita Zilli (rzilliateurocoop.coop - tel. +32-2-285-00-72).