"Over the last few years, our region has experienced extreme climate events: drought, floods, storms": Jean Yves Le Drian, president of the French Region of Brittany, is one of the promoters of the First World Summit of the Regions on Climate Change, taking place today and tomorrow in Saint-Malo. It will be attended by about one hundred delegates from the regions of fifty countries: the initiative, which is supported by the EU, is part of the "energy-climate" file which the EU institutions and the member states are working at and which will be diucussed by the summit in December. "With this event explains Le Drian , the regions intend to prove that the local centres play a focal role in the fight against climate change". As well as "reviewing the situation in scientific terms, the goal of the Summit is to compare those local practical experiences that might be repeated elsewhere". In this way, the regions intend to "take part in the big European and world debates, now that the final agreement on the energy-climate package is being negotiated" and in the "run-up to the Copenhagen Conference of 2009 which will lay the grounds for the after-Kyoto".
