World Business Summit on Climate Change

This article is part of the Climate project of Spinwatch.

The World Business Summit on Climate Change (WBSCC) took place from May 24th-26th 2009 in Copenhagen with the support of former Danish Climate Minister and president of UN negotiations on climate change at COP 15, Connie Hedegaard, and the President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, as well as UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, amongst other influential figures in climate policy. The summit was organised by businesses and neo-liberal agenda, business-led climate pressure groups Copenhagen Climate Council, The UN Global Compact, World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The Climate Group, Combat Climate Change (3C) and The World Economic Forum's Climate Change Initiative. It was addressed by world leaders such as Ban Ki-moon, Yvo de Boer, and Lars Rasmussen and scientists such as Sir David King as well as representatives of major energy intensive businesses.

'The Copenhagen Call'

The outcome of the conference was a 'Call' out from the business community for 'an ambitious and effective global climate treaty' with six concise steps to achieve their suggested target. These steps center on creating better carbon markets, and securing subsidies from public money for under-developed techno-fixes such as CCS and new nuclear. They claim:

Reducing the emissions that until now have been so linked to our economic growth and betterment will be an enormous, unprecedented global challenge but will also provide significant opportunities for sustainable growth, development and innovation. Acting together, we owe it to future generations to meet this challenge. Now is the time to create the foundations for long term, low carbon prosperity. We are willing to work with government to do so.

Behind this greenwash language of concern and will for radical change, is a proposed strategy which sees the market and global business as the only mechanism which can limit the effects of climate change, and should do so by the lowest possible cost option. This document was one of the main items of discussion at the Copenhagen COP 15 summit, and had a strong guiding effect on negotiations, demonstrated by main WBCSS organiser - the Copenhagen Climate Council's relative praise of the resulting Copenhagen Accord which has many of the same aims and mechanisms as the WBCSS advocated.

Central to the WNCSS strategy is the continuation of carbon offsetting schemes which allow companies to pay a relatively cheap price for often ineffective projects in the developing world. Some of the most criticised of these schemes are forest protection offsets (see Greenpeace - 'Carbon Scam' ), which the Call explicitly push for.

Increased investment is also called for into 'low emission technologies'- such as the much criticised Carbon Capture and Storage- under-developed technologies which will allow business-as-usual profit and production while promising to bury carbon emissions at the end of the production process (ignoring environmental damage and pollution at other stages of the production chain) - though not until 2020 at the earliest..

Finally, the call advocates agreement on a 'science-based greenhouse gas stabilization path with 2020 and 2050 emissions reduction targets', which will help set a price for carbon credits and make trading and offsetting more attractive.

The six measures at the heart of the 'Call' are:

• 1. Agreement on a science-based greenhouse gas stabilization path with 2020 and 2050 emissions reduction targets that will achieve it;
• 2. Effective measurement, reporting and verification of emissions performance by business;
• 3. Incentives for a dramatic increase in financing low emissions technologies;
• 4. Deployment of existing low-emissions technologies and the development of new ones;
• 5. Funds to make communities more resilient and able to adapt to the effects of climate change, and
• 6. Means to finance forest protection.

Danish Government Support and Coercion

The critical research centre Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) have questioned Connie Hedegaard's heavy involvement and allegiance with the WBCSS which seriously biased the Copenhagen negotiations in favour of big business and weak market-based solutions with low targets. According to the CEO:

In the run-up to COP15, she and her government offered the corporate climate lobby an unprecedented opportunity to influence the negotiations. Her ministry and Hedegaard herself gave significant help in setting up last year’s main lobbying event, the World Business Summit on Climate Change, in Copenhagen in May. She enthusiastically promoted the World Business Summit on a number of occasions and made speeches and statements that were practically written by the organisers. Hedegaard’s ministry was so involved in the World Business Summit that when invitees either registered or sent their apologies, many did so to the minister - not to the Danish business coalition in charge of the practicalities. What is more when Hedegaard appeared at the Business Summit in a closed session, she and her boss, Prime Minister Rasmussen, promised to ensure “a structured dialogue” with negotiators in the UN process, a move her Ministry had been working on since May 2008 in dialogue with the Danish organisers of the Business Summit. Finally she and the Prime Minister offered to make the declaration from the business summit a key document at the negotiating table.

Affiliations

The summit was organised by businesses and neo-liberal agenda, business-led climate pressure groups Copenhagen Climate Council, The UN Global Compact, World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The Climate Group, Combat Climate Change (3C) and The World Economic Forum's Climate Change Initiative.

People

Organisers

• Erik Rasmussen CEO, Monday Morning; and Founder of Copenhagen Climate Council which largely organised the summit.

Sponsors

• Alstom Construction of coal, gas, nuclear and hydro power stations.
• Audi cars
• Berlingske Tidende Leading Danish newspaper
• Climate Consortium Denmark Business and Industry Pressure Group
• CNBC Leading global news network
• DONG Energy Large Danish based energy company
• Global Passenger Network Aviation. Organised transport for the summit.
• International Herald Tribune newspaper
• Masdar Dubai 'renewable' energy company
• National Geographic Society
• Novo Nordisk diabetes care
• Novozymes bio-tech
• SAS Aviation and transport

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