Climate Change
Introduction
The World Economic Forum engages business, government and experts in partnerships to create the low-carbon economy. The World Economic Forum provides a neutral platform to develop universal carbon emissions reporting.
Creating the Low-Carbon Economy
To ensure our future prosperity, we need a high-growth and low-carbon economy. To that end, a set of practical policies and incentives is urgently required to help remove the obstacles to more low-carbon finance and technology. This will enable green recovery packages to have maximum impact. But this is not a task for governments alone. As the key delivery agent of low-carbon investment, innovation, products and services, business needs to have a voice at the table.
To ensure our future prosperity, we need a high-growth and low-carbon economy. To that end, a set of practical policies and incentives is urgently required to help remove the obstacles to more low-carbon finance and technology. This will enable green recovery packages to have maximum impact. But this is not a task for governments alone. As the key delivery agent of low-carbon investment, innovation, products and services, business needs to have a voice at the table.
A World Economic Forum task force presented world leaders with proposals to accelerate private sector investment and innovation in the fight against climate change. Eighty business leaders and over 40 environmental and scientific experts 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.
CEO Climate Policy Recommendations
International business leaders, together with governments and climate specialists, drew up a comprehensive set of business recommendations on a post-2012 framework for global climate policy. The CEO Climate Policy Recommendations to G8 Leaders informed G8 leaders' climate change discussions at their Hokkaido-Toyako summit in July 2008.
- 100 CEOs of global companies endorse detailed statement, representing all sectors and regions and collectively more than 10 percent of the value of the world's publically quoted firms
- “Environmentally effective and economically efficient” framework proposed to succeed Kyoto Accord
- Call for both long-term and practical medium-term targets, “such as the aspiration to at least halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”
- New public-private agenda for a combined top-down/bottom-up approach to reducing global emissions
A Steering Board consisting of the following World Economic Forum Industry Partner companies guided development of this CEO statement for the G8: Alcoa (USA), AIG (USA), Applied Materials (USA), Basic Element (Russian Federation), British Airways (UK), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Duke Energy (USA), Electricité de France (EdF) (France), Eskom (South Africa), Petrobras (Brazil), RusHydro (Russian Federation), Royal Dutch Shell (Netherlands), Telstra (Australia), Tokyo Electric Power (Japan), TNT (Netherlands), Vattenfall (Sweden).
Carbon Disclosure Standards Board
The Board has developed of a global framework for corporate reporting on climate change. Comprehensive, consistent and comparable information on emissions offers greater certainty on disclosure requirements for corporations, and thereby provide useful guidance for standard setting by national regulators.
Board Members are:
Carbon Disclosure Standards Board
The Board has developed of a global framework for corporate reporting on climate change. Comprehensive, consistent and comparable information on emissions offers greater certainty on disclosure requirements for corporations, and thereby provide useful guidance for standard setting by national regulators.
Board Members are:
Public-Private Roundtables at the Third Clean Energy Ministerial
The Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) was launched in 2010 as a high-level global forum through which to promote policies and programmes that advance clean energy technology, to share lessons learned and best practices and to encourage the transition to a global clean energy economy. The first CEM was held in Washington DC in July 2010 and included the launch of several new initiatives designed to improve energy efficiency, enhance clean energy supply and expand clean energy access. The second CEM, which was held in Abu Dhabi in April 2011, advanced progress on these initiatives. The third CEM,...
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August 6, 2012
Summary Report of the Sustainable Growth Summit
On 16 April 2012, the Sustainable Growth Summit at the World Economic Forum on Latin America brought together global and regional leaders to discuss the themes of economic growth, food security and sustainability. The Sustainable Growth Summit was a lead-in to the World Economic Forum on Latin America, highlighting the importance of sustainable growth on the regional agenda. The Summit highlighted the many public-private partnerships and innovative corporate initiatives that are advancing solutions in clean energy, low-carbon transport, water and agriculture, and green investment in the...
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July 13, 2012
Financing Green Growth in a Resource-constrained World
The scale and frequency of weather shocks, combined
with long-term economic forecasts of climate change effects and fossil fuel
costs, are having a political as well as an economic impact. Many developing
country governments are changing their approach to infrastructure and
industrial planning, choosing to design more sustainable, resilient pathways to
economic growth. They are developing comprehensive national investment
programmes in clean energy, energy efficiency, water management,
climate-resilient agriculture, smart grids and low-carbon transport systems.
This strategic shift has been...
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February 16, 2012
The New Sustainability Champions
The New Sustainability
Champions are sixteen emerging market based companies presented by the World
Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group in their recent report
Redefining the Future of Growth.These companies create unconventional and profitable solutions that impact economic growth and enhance overall
sustainability in their regions.Read more | 中文
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January 12, 2012
Scaling Up Low-Carbon Infrastructure Investments in Developing Countries
The Critical Mass Initiative was created in early 2010 to catalyse public-private collaborations to help pioneer a new wave of bankable and scalable transactions in low-carbon infrastructure, in developing and emerging economies. This is an unique platform convened by the World Economic Forum, International Finance Corporation and United Nations Foundation, in association with the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change and the Investor Network on Climate Risk. PwC was the Project Adviser to the World Economic Forum for this initiative. The Critical Mass Initiative adopted...
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January 27, 2011
From Collision to Vision: Climate Change and World Trade
In the study, the Working Group on Trade and Climate Change outlines how a clash between trade and climate change can be avoided and suggests how the World Trade organization (WTO) can advance trade while achieving climate change goals.
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December 8, 2010
World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2008
Turmoil in the financial markets and the continuing conflict in the Middle East were of immediate concern at the Annual Meeting 2008. Mounting awareness of the epochal challenge of climate change and the looming threat of global terrorism heightened a shared sense of urgency.
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November 10, 2010
Accelerating Smart Grid Investments
Smart grid technology will bring together the advancements in the IT and Telecommunications sector – embedded sensing, computing and ubiquitous communications – to deliver a safer, more efficient and more resilient energy system. Not dissimilar to the Internet, this smart grid will act as a backbone infrastructure, enabling a suite of new business models, new energy management services and new energy tariff structures.
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November 5, 2010
SlimCity Facilitation Guide
The SlimCity Knowledge Cards were produced by the Foresight, Incubation and Innovation Group at Arup, a global firm of consultant engineers, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum. Arup and the Forum assembled a project team comprising researchers, graphic designers, copy editors and picture researchers to create an innovative product that would help administrations in cities and the private sector take effective and appropriate measures to address complex environmental and resource challenges for urban centres.
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November 5, 2010
Carbon neutral skies
The Carbon Neutral Skies project will provide a platform for stakeholders to identify economic measures to facilitate the implementation of carbon management strategies for the aviation industry that enable the industry to reach its carbon reduction goals and targets while minimizing competitive distortion among operators, countries and regions.
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November 5, 2010
Low-carbon energy infrastructure and land use
The Task Force on Low-Carbon Economic Prosperity, convened by the World Economic Forum at the invitation of Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters 2009, brings together over 80 global companies and over 40 experts and organizations.As governments of the major economies are gearing up to spend a combined amount of about US$ 3 trillion to stimulate growth, one thing is crystal clear: to ensure our future prosperity, we need a high-growth and low-carbon economy. To that end, a set of practical policies and incentives is urgently required to help remove the obstacles...
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November 5, 2010
Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2010: Driving Growth through Sustainability
This report aims to summarize the ideas and insights that emerged during the discussions and debates in Tianjin. It also tries to capture the level of engagement of participants and their determination to explore ways to balance growth and sustainability. Sustainability requires revisiting current values and norms, challenging long-held economic assumptions, rethinking business models, exploring scientific and technological solutions to foster innovation and creativity within organizations, and shaping more effective and representative institutions and...
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November 3, 2010
Taskforce on Low-Carbon Prosperity: Recommendations
The Low-Carbon Prosperity Task Force was a business-led multistakeholder collaboration that engaged over 80 Forum Industry Partners and experts from nearly 40 academic, non-governmental organizations and public sector institutions during 2009. The implications of their work are profound. Their proposals constitute a potential new dimension of the emerging international architecture on climate change – a series of practical public-private collaborations to enable faster progress within the overarching framework that governments negotiate. This report builds on two prior phases of work that...
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November 3, 2010
Taskforce on Low-Carbon Prosperity: Summary of Recommendations
In January, at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2009 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, United Kingdom Prime Minister and Group of 20 Chairman Gordon Brown appealed for “business to formulate with us the economic and policy conditions that will incentivize their investment and that will bring the low-carbon economy into being.” In response, the Forum organized six multistakeholder working groups to examine how the transition to a low-carbon growth could be accelerated in key areas. These industry executives and experts collaborated in a series of workshops and virtual meetings on the...
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November 3, 2010
Green Investing 2009: Towards a Clean Energy Infrastructure
The World Economic Forum is proud to release this report as part of our Green Investing project. The Green Investing project, which was mandated by the Forum’s Investors community at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos in January 2008, aims to explore ways in which the world’s leading investors can most effectively engage in the global effort to address climate change. The investment volumes required to avoid the catastrophic impact of climate change are substantial and success will largely depend on the successful mobilization of both the public and private sectors. This...
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November 3, 2010
Green Investing 2010: Policy Mechanisms to Bridge the Financing Gap
In this report, we provide an update on the status of investment volumes in clean energy and an overview of the different technologies that will contribute significantly to a future low-carbon energy infrastructure, as well as the key enablers that are required in order to allow those technologies to get to scale. We also highlight developments in the carbon markets and global negotiations (in Copenhagen and beyond) which affect clean energy and greenhouse gas emissions as a whole. Finally, we provide an analytical framework to evaluate 35 different types of policy mechanisms designed to...
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November 3, 2010
Managing our Future Water Needs for Agriculture, Industry, Human Health and the Environment
Significant business disruptions due to water scarcity – across all sectors and geographies, and with all the associated technical, economic, political, environmental and social implications – are a reality today, and are projected to worsen in the future, as a result of climate change and demographics. Governments play an important role in helping to mitigate and adapt to the challenge, but so does the private sector, through individual company actions and through innovative public-private and multistakeholder partnerships. CEOs are called to catalyse holistic...
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October 24, 2010
Water
Local Water Crises ACT: Analysis Country-level Work and Engaging GovernmentsWater SecurityA note about the 2030 Water Resources Group Water security (whether it be the challenge of too little water over long periods of time, or too much water all at once) is one of the most tangible and fastest-growing social, political and economic challenges faced today. It is also a fast-unfolding environmental crisis. In every sector, the demand for water is expected to increase and analysis suggests that the world will face a 40% global shortfall between forecast demand and available...
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October 19, 2010
What Next for the Climate Challenge?
What Next for the Climate Challenge?The December climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico, seeks to regain the momentum towards a global agreement, despite its long odds.What actionable steps should leaders focus on in Cancun to rebuild trust and ensure ongoing progress in areas such as deforestation, energy and finance?Key Points• Pragmatic optimism is called for on this issue, accepting the limitations of multilateral processes while remaining committed to them.• Progress requires a multi-pronged approach, combining dynamic bottom-up solutions (such as sustainable cities) with ...
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September 14, 2010
Climate Change: Financing Urgent Adaptation
The immediate and most critical consequences of climate change affect countries which have contributed least to global warming. Developing countries need up to 200 billion euros yearly to fight drought, lack of water, floods and deforestation limitation, and to introduce friendly energy sources. Therefore, immediate financial help from developed countries is of vital importance to such countries.
How should adaptation measures be financed in fast-developing nations and developing countries to protect the climate? Which financing instruments are effective?
How can international solutions...
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January 29, 2010
Global Redesign Series: Addressing Climate Change -- An African Imperative
• Marcus Agius • Tom Boardman • Robert M. Godsell• Ulla Tørnæs • Buyelwa SonjincaChaired by • Christopher BurnsThursday 11 JuneWith the Copenhagen Climate Conference only months away, serious issues related to global climate change remain unresolved – most particularly, the balance that will be struck between efforts to mitigate climate change through the reduction of carbon emissions and programmes designed to help affected countries and populations cope with climate-related disasters such as drought, floods and famine.Adapting to climate change has to be accorded equal status to ...
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June 11, 2009
Green Jobs: Putting Climate Change to Work
Discussions on climate change often focus predominantly on the costs of action or inaction, but the opportunities that
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January 24, 2008
