NEW! Call for regional best practices on climate change.

The AER Committee 1 is aiming to highlight the role of regions in the field of climate change by putting together regional best practices contributing to limit climate change through mitigation measures.

If you would like to join the discussion on climate change and bring your contribution, please download and fill-in the document below and return it to the AER secretariat.

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NEW! Call for partners: INTERREG SUDOE 2007-2013 - PROJECT BIOS

ADRAT, a Portuguese organisation is looking for French partners to join the BIOS project.

The conditions of SUDOE programme to be partner of the project are:

1) To be located in one of the following regions: Poitou-Charentes, Aquitaine, Midi-Pyrénees, Limousin, Auvergne, Languedoc-Roussillon
2) To be a public or equivalent organisation or entity.

DEADLINE of the call is 13 June 2008

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Call for partners for FP7 project on geothermy

The Region of Kirsehir in Turkey is currently looking for partners for a project on geothermy.

The project is aimed to be funded under the FP7 call FP7-REGIONS-2008-2. Facilitating the emergence of new regional research driven clusters and mutual exchange of information.

In the 2008 call, proposals should address one or both of the following topics:

• Maximising the benefits of research infrastructures for regional economic development
• Regional contributions to the reduction of CO2 emissions

The second topic would be at the heart of the project, in view of reducing CO2 emissions. There are currently two hotels in the Region which are used as SPA centres and 1800 buildings are using Geothermal Energy for heating.

Should you wish to provide Kirsehir with your experience or joint them in this project, please contact: Murat Gencer, Governorship of Kirsehir EU Programmes Coordinator, fp7projects(at)yahoodelete_me.com

Climate Protection and Renewable Energy: Medium and Small Communities facing the challenge - Rovigo (IT) 2-4 April 2008

The AER was a partner with ICLEI (Local Govenrments for Sustainability) in the organisation of this event. The European Climate Change Conference brought together advanced cities and towns who shared with committed municipalities their capacity and experiences about energy efficiency and renewable energy, district heating and co-generation, adaptation and other burning issues related to climate protection.

More information on the conference's outcomes available here

You can also contact the AER secretariat for a feedback on the meeting, provided by the AER representative in Rovigo.

Outcomes of the Spring session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities (Malaga, 13-14 March 2008)

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• Draft opinion of the Committee of the Regions on Addressing the challenges of water scarcity and droughts in the European Union

The Committee of the Regions will be voting on this draft opinion from the Sustainable Development Committee, during its plenary meeting on 9-10 April 2008. Rapporteur is Mr. Francisco Camps Ortiz (ES/PPE) from the region of Valencia whose aim is to find full support of the AER members that are also taking part in the Committee of the Regions and thus obtain the best results in April.

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• Strategic Workshop on 'Global Change and Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions', 7-9 April 2008

15 year ago, the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) highlighted that mountains are an important source of water, energy and biological diversity. As a major ecosystem representing the complex and interrelated ecology of our planet, mountain environments are essential to the survival of the global ecosystem.

In the response to the request of numerous researchers, COST is organising on 7 - 9 April 2008 in Innsbruck (Austria) a Strategic Workshop on 'Global Change and Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions' aiming at the identifying of future research needs in the context of the sustainable development in mountain regions. The outcome will provide rationales and guidelines for researchers, research managers, policy makers, as well as funding agencies.

This strategic workshop will focus on putting research topics on mountain ecosystem services on the political agenda and will identify the implications of climate and socioeconomic change for current and future forms of land use. The workshop will the impact on selected ecosystem services such as hazard protection, recreation, and natural resources. Furthermore, scenarios of change and its implication for societies depending on these ecosystem services are appraised.

The following topics are treated as cross-cutting issues and will be discussed in deta

• Multifunctional land use in a global change context;
• Challenges for sustainable tourism;
• Demand and evaluation of ecosystem services;
• Water: strategic resource, public good, ecosystem;
• Sustainable transport;
• Scenarios of global change.

Detailed information is available under bfw.ac.at/mountain/ or contact the local organisers Dr. Robert Jandl (Austrian Federal Research and Training Centre for Forests, Natural Hazards and Landscape) or Prof. Axel Borsdorf (Austrian Academy of Sciences).

NEW! Publication of the Climat change package

The two presentations below from DG Agriculture and DG Environment 'Climate Action' of the European Commission give an overview of the Climate and Renewable Energy package adopted by the Commission on 23 January 2008. This package is the Commission's legislative proposal to achieve agreed EU objectives in the fight against climate change; it features measures on CO2 'burden sharing' and on the post 2013 period of carbon trading under the EU-ETS, revised EU state aid rules, a communication on carbon capture and storage (CCS), and a prosposed directive on renewable energies, including biofuels

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AER Response to European Commission Green Paper on Climate Change

Committee 1 has published a response to the Green Paper from the Commission to the European Communities "Adapting to climate change in Europe: Options for EU action". This document has been submitted to the European Commission in response to the public consultation. To consult the EC Green Paper, please click here.

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AER Resolution on climate change adopted in Kazan

Committee 1 has adopted a resolution on climate change during its plenary meeting in Kazan, Tatarstan (RU) on 19 September 2007.

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AER Working group on climate change

The working group on climlate change is chaired by the Region of Noord-Brabant (NL).

Climate change has become en central policy with two recent founding initiatives. On the one hand, the European Commission published on 29 June 2007 a Green Paper entitled "Adapting to climate change in Europe - options for EU actions". The other event to be mentioned is the G8 Summit concultions which addresses solutions to environmental questions through the promotion of Corporate Social Responsibility.

The objectives of the working group will be to answer the European Commission's consultation by analysing the recent green paper from the perspective of a region. The working group will also attempt to influence the European Commission in this area and to actively participate in the planned workshops as experts. Finallly, the working group might organise a conference on Corporate Social Responsibility in 2008.

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AER Working group on water

The working group on water is chaired by the Region of Valencia (E).

The increasing demand by citizens and environment organisations for cleaner rivers and lakes, groundwater and coastal beaches has been evident for considerable time. It has recently been confirmed by a survey from Eurobarometer. Issues such as floods, water scarcity and droughts have become increasingly important on a technical and political level.

The objectives of the working group will be to follow the implementation of the Water Framework Directive, to lobby the EU institutions to keep in mind the role of all European regions in water-related problems as well as to inform Europe-wide of the importance of water policies.

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If you would like to join the activities of either of these working groups, please contact the AER Secretariat.

On 30th April, the European Commission published the review of its activities in the field of environment in 2006. The first part was dedicated to climate change and the current and upcoming energy challenges. The second part dealt with Nature and biodiversity. The third part was on environment and health and the last one on resource use.

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Links to related pages

AER & energy policies

AER & tourism policies

Past events

Sustainable rural development: Interministerial Conference on What future for rural areas in Europe?, Bari, Puglia, 13-14-15 May 2004

AER Seminar on Sustainable Development: Gera, Thüringen, 10 October 2003

UN Summit on Sustainable Development:

The AER Committee C 'Regional Policies' attended the UN Summit on Sustainable Development, notably its Local Government Session (LGS) (Johannesburg, 27-30 August 2002), which the AER co-organised together with the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI). The AER also took part in the Johannesburg event for Sub-national levels of Government (31 August).
Mr Thomas Hägg, County councillor from Jämtland (S), Committee C member, represented Committee C on these important occasions.
Moreover, Mr Bernard Soulage, AER Committee C member and Regional Councillor from Rhône-Alpes (F), also attended the Multi-stakeholders Dialogue.

An essential part of the LGS was the exchange of examples of good regional practices and partnership initiatives in different fields of sustainable development. The AER, co-organisor of the LGS, presented its member regions' concrete actions in favour of sustainable development.

The paper which the AER presented during the Summit and the follow-up report on the participation of the AER are available upon request at the AER Committee C Secretariat.

In 2002-2003, the Working group 'CAP and its impact on Sustainable rural and agricultural development' of AER Committee C, co-ordinated by Gloucestershire, established a report on regional good practices in the field of rural development. A 'Rural form', available in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, was set up.This form listed key issues linked to rural development. Of course, this list was not exhaustive and Regions were invited to complete it with their own suggestions. For every question, Regions were asked to indicate whether they face these issues, to specify how these issues expressed themselves and, above all, to describe the actions they undertook to address these issues.

The results of this survey were used for the AER report in Johannesburg.They also served for the production of an Interim Report which was forwarded to the European Commission, as a contribution to the mid-termreview of CAP, announced on 10 July 2003 y Commissioner Fischler. This report on CAP mid-term review is available upon request in English and French.