The Seventh Ministerial Conference of the Asia-Pacific Cooperative Ministers opened here today with a call to member-driven cooperative societies to brace themselves for meeting the challenges of globalisation. Upgradation of technology and human resource development were identified as the solution to meet the challenges. Inaugurating the three-day conference, the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, said the biggest challenge before cooperative institutions all over the world was to "both survive and thrive" in an era of economic reforms.