Under the slogan ‘act and adapt’, Green Week, the biggest annual conference devoted to European environment policy, examines “the multi-faceted challenges of reducing EU and global greenhouse gas emissions and of adapting to the climate change that is already under way”. According to a European Commission press release, “eight of the sessions also try to come up with a realistic vision of how a low-carbon world in 2050 would look”.
Green Week was opened by Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, who will also speak at the closing session focusing on ‘The Road to Copenhagen’ alongside the European Commission's Chairman, José Manuel Durao Barroso. Dimas said: “With the Copenhagen conference coming up, 2009 has the potential to go down in history as a turning point in the battle to prevent climate change from reaching dangerous levels and causing human misery on a vast scale. Green Week’s comprehensive programme will enable participants to share knowledge about a wide range of aspects of the climate challenge that policy-makers, economic operators and society in general need to be addressing now.”
Four themes, 36 sessions
Now in its ninth year, the Green Week conference and associated exhibition has established itself as a major annual forum for dialogue and for sharing experience, expertise and best practice in protecting the environment, and over 4,000 participants have registered so far.
According to the EC press release, Green Week 2009 will look at climate change under four headings: EU climate change policies; the international dimension; living with climate change; and ‘2050 vision: a carbon-free society’. The programme comprises 36 conference sessions, some organised in partnership with the Brussels think-tank Friends of Europe, plus a small number of additional side sessions.
The broad spectrum of issues that covered includes implementation of the EU climate and energy package, the impact of climate change on employment and social cohesion, how biodiversity can adapt to climate change, ‘greening’ the economy, the challenge for agriculture, the international security dimension and latest developments in carbon capture and storage.
Speakers at Green Week 2009 include top-level representatives from some of the leading environmental bodies such as Festus Mogae, UN Special Envoy on climate change; Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Vice Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Tony Long, Director of the WWF European Policy Office; and Jeff McNeely, Chief Scientist from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
The EC press release also states that, “participants are expected from EU institutions, business and industry, non-governmental organisations, public authorities, the scientific community and academia”. Entry is free of charge and all conferences are being streamed live on the Green Week website.
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