Thinking the Future is a joint activity with Bank Austria Unicredt Group. The lectures take place in Vienna and address topics which are related to the future of the economy.

In 2009, there were two lectures: Elmar Altvater spoke about "Pensions Made in China" and Dennis Meadows discussed the options for shrinking the economy.

For further information please visit the
Zukunft Denken Website.

The Aurelio Peccei Lectures are organized by the Brussels-EU Chapter of the Club of Rome and the European Support Centre. They are dedicated to Aurelio Peccei, one of the founders of the Club of Rome

The Peccei lectures are focusing on the complex set of interconnected problems which humankind faces today.

For further information please visit the
Peccei Lectures Website.

Competitiveness has been a key concept of the Lisbon strategy and efforts to strengthen European competitiveness influence many political measures - in the economy as well as in the education system. The conference "Europe after Lisbon" discussed the long-term aspects of competition and competitiveness. How can competition be directed towards and support achieving sustainable development on the European and the global scale?

For further information please visit the
conference website.

Bucharest: Which Forces Are Driving Europe?

For more information please visit the
conference webseite.

Will Europe take up the challenge of the limits to growth of resource consumption? Will it be the continent where decoupling of further growth of GDP from resource use can be achieved? Or will there be no future for an ageing continent with a shrinking and less and less innovative population? How can science, how can a new futurology help to overcome the problems ahead? The symposium was organized in co-operation with the Portuguese EU-Presidency and was hosted by the Scientific Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

The proceedings are available on the
conference website.

The European Support Centre and the Brussels-EU Chapter of the Club of Rome organized a symposium "Civil Society Monitoring the EU Strategy for Sustainable Development" in co-operation with the Austrian EU Presidency.

The proceedings are available on the
conference website

The project studies direct and indirect effects of information technology on the environment. An Avatar in "second life" was reported to consume as much energy as a real life Brazilian and the whole electronic data processing more than international air traffic. The project studies options for a reduction of energy use as well as paper and materials consumption

For further information please visit the
project website

in November 2006, the European Support Centre and the Finnish Association of the Club of Rome organized a symposium "Information Technology, Competitivness and the Environment" in co-operation with the Finnish EU Presidency in Helsinki.

The proceedings are available on the
conference website

The Club of Rome and UNESCO co-organized a three-day World Conference from May 11th to May 13th 2005 on the use of information and communication technologies, including satellites, for development, in particular, capacity-building through education. These are key strategies for achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The proceedings are available on the
conference website.

We are living in an increasingly networked society. This means on the one hand an incraese of social capital. On the other hand, there are open questions about the quality of the new electronic contacts, about codes of conduct and about ethics. And how will the contacts in virtual life be related to and influence social activities in real life?

A symposium on these topics was held in Vienna in co-operation with the German EU-Presidency.

The proceedings are available on the
conference website.

A symposion on future perspectives of society was organized in Vienna by the Austrian Chapter and the European Support Centre of the Club of Rome in co-operation with the City of Vienna. The focus was on the influence of the presently dominating ways of globalisation on the individual citizen and on the social capital of society. Among the speakers there were Ernst Gehmacher, Esko Kalimo, Cornelia Klinger, Ewald Nowotny and Siegfried Sellitsch.

The proceedings are available on the
conference website.

There is more and more concern that not only natural capital is disappearing as a consequence of unsustainable development, but that social capital is lost as well. Social capital can be interpreted as the sum of personal ties of humans and it plays an essential role not only in private life but also in companies. In co-operation with the Austrian Chapter of the Club of Rome, the ESC is organising seminars and workshops on the topic in Vienna. A workshop was organized in co-operation with the Austrian Ministry for Economy and Labour, the Lebensministerium, the Eco-Social Forum Europe and the E.L.E.C on "The Role of Social Capital in a Sustainable Economy".

The proceedings are available on the
download

The European Support Centre is supporting the European Network for the Study of Globalisation, which is working on new theoretical approaches which help not only to undertand, but also to manage globalisation.

For more information, please visit the
website of the network.

The European Support Centre provides a newsticker which presents the latest news on the themes of (bio)fuels and food price increase.

For more information, please visit the
Food and Fuel Newsticker.

The European Support Centre and the Austrian Chapter of the Club of Rome, in co-operation with the Austrian National Bank, organize a conference which will discuss the impact of biofuel production (and indirectly of fossile fuel price increase) on food prices.

For more information, please visit the
conference website (in German).

The European Environmental Education Project (EEE) is the largest European initiative which promotes the use of information technology for pedagocical work. The website of the project describes and links almost 300 educational projects from most European countries. The website is accessible via http://www.eeeprojects.net

"Limits to Growth" has been a key isssue in the work of the Club of Rome. Published in 1972 as a Report to the Club of Rome, the book has been updated by the autors in 1992 and 2004. The European Support Centre and SERI have organized a symposium with Dennis Meadows on the 30-Year Update of Limits to Growth in co-operation with the City of Vienna and ORF. A publication which includes an article outlining the major findings of the 30-Year Update. of "Limits to Growth" is available for download.

The proceedings and a synopsis of the Update of Limits to Growth are available on the
conference website.

Declining biodiversity in agriculture is one of the main challenges for food security. The Georgian Association and the ESC have established a website which provides background infomation on rare agricultural varieties.

For more information, please visit the
project website

The Annual Reports of the European Support Centre give an overview of its activities. They are available for download via the following links:

• Activity Report 2007
• Activity Report 2006
• Activity Report 2005