Leaders Back Low-carbon Projects Ahead of Climate Talks

The world has reached a tipping point in the fight against climate change, yet leaders at the Summit on the Global Agenda in Dubai are optimistic that incremental victories will ensure the battle is ultimately won.

Public-private partnerships and financing are key to expanding the number of low-carbon projects that are making use of enabling technologies, according to leaders at the summit.

Countries, internal states and companies are increasingly implementing low-carbon initiatives with measurable impact, ahead of UN climate talks next month in Copenhagen aimed at thrashing out a successor to the Kyoto protocol.

Despite the many climate initiatives out there, “not much is happening to reward them but we hope that through the World Economic Forum and its Global Agenda Councils, there will be a new voice in favour of action and providing rewards for action, as well as an agreement in Copenhagen,” said Pavan Sukhdev, of the United Nations Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge. “We are losing this living fabric at a rate that is alarming,” warned Sukhdev, who is project leader, Green Economy.

Japan, India and China have moved dramatically to cut emissions, according to Steve Howard, Chief Executive Officer of Climate Group, United Kingdom; Global Agenda Council on Climate Change. “In four months, China put in as much wind power capacity as the UK did in the past 20 years,” he said, while “the Prime Minister of India wants the country to fight for a global deal”.

Carlos Eduardo de Souza Braga, Governor of Amazonas, Brazil, was hopeful. “We have cut deforestation from 27,000 sq km to 7,000 sq km which is the lowest reduction achieved in Brazil.”

While he remains optimistic about the Copenhagen process, a deal with any chance of success must focus on empowering communities. “If you’re going to create a new mechanism, we must create a mechanism to get funding to communities like those in the Amazon, and create policies to give them health, education, and knowledge for sustainable products,” he said.

Caio Koch-Weser, Vice-Chairman, Deutsche Bank Group in the UK  and a member of the Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Climate Change, voiced concern that despite being a few weeks away from global climate talks in Copenhagen, “we don’t see a framework coming into place”.

He said that the role of the World Economic Forum was critical “because it tasks all of us to urge action but 
also to lend momentum by coming up with public-private partnerships that are implementable and scalable once an agreement is in place,” he said.

Koch-Weser agreed that low-carbon projects should continue to be unveiled and expanded and called for leaders gathering in Copenhagen to create a 100 billion euro fund to finance the low-carbon economy of 
the future.

Over 80 business leaders and 40 environmental and scientific experts from around the world on Saturday outlined a plan for stimulating a “clean revolution” in the private sector within the next few years, even as governments continue negotiations on a climate policy framework in the United Nations.

The World Economic Forum report, The Low-Carbon Prosperity Task Force, presented their findings to G20 leaders in September.