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Dear Colleagues,
The many years’ history of the Energy Forum «Russian Fuel and Energy Complex in the XXI Century» proves that the strategy pursued by its originators and organizers aligns with the direction of the development of the civil society both in Russia and globally. This experience also shows that the Forum has received wide recognition from public.
We believe that our forum has established itself and, as the years go by, has gained reputation of an open and independent discussion platform. It has been possible due to the active and creative people of positive mind who participate in the process following the common idea of improving the world through their own deeds. The atmosphere of cooperation and consolidation together with the thorough analysis of the issues examined at the Forum have always attracted competent representatives of the science-expert society, the business and the authorities.
We have come to the jubilee tenth forum with a good store of experience, knowledge and broad links, with a strong public-expert team of our friends and partners. Due to all these factors we can face the future with optimism and expect further dynamic progress of the Forum.
Time is inexorably bringing us to a next forum – it is about two months before its opening. As early as in last September, just after the summer recess, we announced the first stage of the forum preparation. We outlined our plans concerning the preparation in general terms and proposed the main subject «Energy and Sustainable Development» and reasons for its topicality to our colleagues, the members of the Program Committee. Then, once again, we invited our old friends and partners to make their suggestions concerning the Forum Program.
Today, we may confidently state that the six months’ work of the Program Committee and the Executive Directors of MIEF was quite productive as it did everything that was necessary to bring the preparation of the Forum to the most active concluding stage. First of all, the forming of the Forum Program was practically complete, including finding partners for specific conferences and round tables. Several sessions of the Program Committee were held and its members made specific commitments concerning the preparation of forum events. Dozens of task meetings on different levels were organized; thousands of letters and facsimile messages were sent to our regular participants. Now, the members of the Organizing and Program Committees are holding informative consultations with potential reporters; our analytical service is actively examining the submitted proposals and report theses.
As for the main goal of the jubilee Forum, it is constant in terms of strategic conception and, of course, has specific aspects conditioned by the main topic of the Forum. In strategic view, our goal is to assist solving the global problems of today through consolidation of the society, the business and the authorities. To reach this principle goal we try to carry out a number of strategic and tactical tasks. Firstly, to provide the participants with an opportunity to have an open discussion on a wide range of the topical issues related to the development of the economy and the power industry, including the points of the international agenda. Secondly, to refresh the expert view on the key problems of the power industry, attracting experts from different regions and countries. Thirdly, to attempt to formulate, on the basis of comprehensive analysis, some consolidated assessment of the ongoing changes and the emerging and developing trends. Fourthly, we always aim at creation of meaningful recommendations that we forward to different organizations and agencies in charge of making strategic decisions.
The main topic of the new forum is «World Energy and Sustainable Development in the XXI Century». We will speak of the role of the world energy in the context of the mankind’s passing to more humane, rational, harmonious, balanced or – as it is put in Russia – sustainable development. Currently, this topic gains special importance owing to the soon UN-sponsored international conference RIO+20 that will bring together over hundred presidents and prime-ministers. We suppose that the main reason of the growing popularity and topicality of this theme is the lack of alternatives to the sustainable development concept. This fact is getting more and more obvious for representatives of the vanguard of the science and public-expert society and, moreover, for the state leaders, the leading international organizations and just ordinary people standing aside from the politics. Our world has come into social and climate instability. A new world order concept, a new institutional framework of the world community, new approaches to the organization of the international economic interaction, new international agreements on climate – these are our common strategic goals that may take decades to achieve. But time is short. Even today, the disastrous consequences of the current model do not seem exaggerated. Therefore, all the goodwill forces of the planet should join their efforts to turn the world development vector towards more reasonable and humane future.
But no changes will yield results, unless we provide development of affordable, safe and “clean” energy. Though the energy itself is not our ultimate goal, its role in securing sustainable development can scarcely be overestimated. However, sole understanding of the importance of the energy in the context of the sustainable development will not bring us nearer to the aim. We are badly in need of new up-to-date apprehension of the energy, new agreements reached, especially within the expert community, to deal with the criteria, parameters and other dimensions of the energy sustainability. The situation demands an open discussion on updating the energy strategies – both on the international level and within the national and regional formats. We need deeper understanding of the link between the power industry and all the other domains of our life, while this link is getting more complicated and the overall dynamism of the global changes also requires consideration. It is important to search for new joint solutions to optimize the regimes of the world energy trade and confront the energy poverty of some world regions.
However, choosing the main topic is just a sort of vector to indicate the direction of the general discussion. The forum will include over ten international conferences and round tables. Today, we are close to the completion of the development and approval of the ultimately elaborated and specified forum program. The most topical and complex task that we face today is to analyze the submitted proposals and report theses, to compose final lists of speakers and moderators, to prepare the theses for the concluding document. This is extremely difficult and delicate analytical task that requires comprehensive support of the experts participating in the forum. The round table «Sustainable Development: World Trends and Strategic Ways of Russia», planned for 27 February, will help us to make this work productive and try out the key theses proposed for examination within the plenary discussion. The event will be organized as an open session of the MIEF-2012 Program Committee attended by the external experts from Russia and foreign countries. The event is aimed at open discussion that may help to find new approach to the key problems of sustainable development and to formulate a number of recommendations that could be of use for the relevant decision-makers, also in considering the preparation of RIO+20.
We hope that the discussion will bring us closer to more profound and comprehensive understanding of the subject matter of sustainable development and the role of the power industry in this process. We invite our colleagues, friends and partners to take part in this round table and, generally, in the decisive stage of the preparation of the MIEF-2012. We are open for new ideas and suggestion, as the cooperation is the thing essential for any progress in our work.
Andrey Epishov
General Director of the Forum
30.01.2012
Translated from Russian into English by Literra translation bureau
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