(Meaning of the seven principle of the International Cooperative Alliance)

This paper points out that concern for community is enshrined in the very essence of cooperatives and therefore to consider it as a principle might be regarded as superfluous. Afterwards it makes a survey of the ante-cedents that gave way to the inclusion of this principle into the Statement of the Cooperative Identity and analyses its interpretation in different documents. A special chapter is devoted to the concern about the environment and the project to modify this principle in order to incorporate within its text this ques-tion in an specific way. The article ends considering the treatment of the sub-ject in the Guidance Notes to the Cooperative Principles written by the Princi -ples Committee of the ICA and stating some conclusions about the sense of the principle and its relationship with the increasing relevance of the sustain-able development in the recent years.