Non-state and subnational actors have so far played a decisive role in action on climate, but they often face insurmountable obstacles. At the COP 24 climate change conference in Katowice, Poland, on 2-14 December 2018, the EESC president, Luca Jahier, stressed how urgent it was to tackle climate change and underlined the fact that Europe needed to embrace a new mechanism for sustainability that included multi-stakeholder governance.

"When we look at where we are today," said Mr Jahier, "seeing how strong the disconnect is between the absolute urgency to act now and the slow pace at which governments are moving or even regressing in some cases, we understand how important it is for others to assume leadership and demonstrate the strong determination and huge potential of the bottom-up movement."

Sending a clear message at COP 24, the EESC president highlighted the absolute necessity for urgent climate action: "We either invest in concrete action against climate change or we will have to bear serious consequences. It will be too late to save our planet and our future generations. We need to involve civil society. We have to act now and we have to do it quickly!" (mp)