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 to more low-carbon finance and technology. This will enable green recovery packages to have maximum impact both in the short-term and into the future. 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.
Post Copenhagen, governments are urgently seeking practical and scalable public-private models for “bottom-up” low-carbon growth, especially in developing countries.
Finding ways to mobilize sufficient investment and technological deployment from the private sector is at the heart of this search.
The initiative aims to find scalable models that crowd in private finance for low carbon infrastructure, based on significant case studies; develop large-scale, replicable pilot projects that can draw theprivate sector into sustainable land use and forestry (REDD+) projects; and build a new community of sustainable energy partners within the Forum. At the invitation of the Government of Mexico, findings from this work will be presented and discussed at the Cancun climate meeting (COP16) later in 2010.
