On Monday, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) hosted the annual Business Day at COP16. While attendance was slightly less than the Copenhagen Business Day, it was clear that businesses around the world remain interested in the negotiations and recognize the critical role they can play.
The theme of the day was appropriately titled, “Building Bridges,” and focused on means to increase the dialogue between business and government and within the global business community to deliver action on climate change. The event opened with comments by UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres discussing the significant role for business in addressing climate change. She noted that many of the businesses in the room had already completed the ‘baseline effort’ – measuring their own emissions and implementing cost-saving, energy efficiency projects. However, she noted that business, like governments, needed to now make ‘new and additional efforts,’ specifically leveraging on three areas: 1) measuring emissions throughout the value chain; 2) working within respective sectors to help transform the sector for a low-carbon economy; and 3) building relationships and engagement with national political constituencies to facilitate green growth.
Fortunately, many businesses are already on this pathway. For example, earlier this year, companies across the globe road-tested the GHG Protocol’s standard on Scope 3 Emissions, focused on measuring emissions throughout the value chain. In regard to sectoral approaches, The Sustainability Consortium is piloting a variety of initiatives bringing companies together to identify collaborative, industry approaches to reducing emissions. Finally, the WBCSD and ICC partnered with the Mexican Government in advance of COP16 to host a series of ‘Dialogues’ between business and government to discuss specific issues related to negotiations and promote a dialogue both at the national and international level on topics, such as financing for green growth, carbon markets and technology. KPMG’s network of firms is participating in each of these initiatives and assisting clients with baseline efforts, as well as those pursuing new and additional efforts.
Yvo de Boer, KPMG’s Global Advisor for Climate Change & Sustainability, also spoke during several sessions throughout the day. Yvo shared his perspective on the opportunity for business engagement with the negotiations and highlighted the challenge of further building confidence in the green growth economy. He specifically noted the role for business in developing NAMAS (Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions) and the challenge of making the green growth economy convincing at both the company and country level. His statements echoed his recent interview in National Geographic magazine, where he further discusses the role of business in the climate negotiations.
The bottom line: Governments may need to be further convinced that the green growth model is possible…the most convincing argument is demonstrating that it can be done.