In the race towards a more sustainable future, the EU each year arranges a Sustainable Energy Week. In 2011, the event took place from 11-15 April. This week is a key event in all parts of Europe and hundreds of events take place in order to promote sustainability.
One of the events in Brussels this year was coordinated by the LG Action consortium on 13 April 2011. The event was carried out as a discussion forum with the aim of getting local governments in Europe together to share their knowledge and experiences with climate and energy policies on local levels.
The participants came from all parts of Europe and included representatives from the LG Action consortium, the European Commission, WWF, as well as representatives from local authorities in Denmark, Lithuania, Norway, Italy and many others.
The discussion forum was initiated by presentations from Maryke Van Staden and Carsten Rothballer from ICLEI Europe, the LG Action coordinator. These presentations highlighted some of the local government perspectives from 30 European countries on climate and energy policy, which led to an interesting and informative discussion about some successful cases from the local governments' communication strategies.
After these presentations, the focus turned to some concrete examples from the local governments in three European countries: Italy, Denmark and Norway: Emilio D'Alessio from CA21L outlined the benchmark of Italian local-regional cooperation in the climate and energy field; Peter Fjerring from the Local Government Denmark presented the Nordic perspectives on local government climate issues, and; Einar Ekern from The Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities presented the local-national dialogue in Norway.
The three presentations gave a unique insight into the different countries' approaches towards climate issues, and it demonstrated some of the similarities and differences between the Nordic countries and the Southern European countries.
The day ended with an informative discussion between the different local governments, and it laid the foundations for future networking and knowledge-sharing between European local governments about climate and energy policies.
A view of the LG Action event at the Sustainable Energy
Week in Brussels.