The aims of the Estoril Conferences are to create an annual international event to discuss the challenges of globalization, with specific attention being granted to the relationship between the local and the global fields.
This initiative aims to set Cascais, and Portugal, as meeting places for some of the most renowned personalities, international organisations, universities, research and development centres, thinks tanks and non-governmental organisations.
Portugal, having always been affected by the confluence of two major maritime spaces (the Mediterranean and the Atlantic), has had, and may thus continue to have, a frontline tradition of bringing together peoples and regions in debates on ideas about modernity, ecumenism and universalism.
Underlying globalisation are political, economic, social and cultural changes occurring nowadays all over the world, promoting and accelerating new international players, schisms, inter-connections and interdependences among peoples, countries and regions. In our fast changing world, the growing interdependence among the different actors and regions poses both challenges and opportunities that require an increasingly profound analysis.
Through their innovating approach, the Estoril Conferences embody the operational concept of “problem-solving”, starting from the presupposition that the problems are global and require both global and local solutions. Thus, the relationship between global and local is a theme common to all the annual editions, with a “problem-issue” being defined for each one.
