Leading climate change organizations are to create what they hope will
be a generally accepted framework for climate risk-related reporting by
corporations.
The seven non-governmental organizations agreed at the recent World
Economic Forum annual meeting at Davos in Switzerland to form a Climate
Disclosure Standards Board. The board will assist companies in
streamlining their climate change disclosures so that investors and the
public can better compare and analyze the information.
The founding members are the California Climate Action Registry, the
Carbon Disclosure Project, Ceres, the Climate Group, the International
Emissions Trading Association, the WEF Global Greenhouse Gas Register
and the World Resources Institute.
Crucially, each of the seven organizations has agreed to make the same
specific requests for information from companies ‘to ensure that they
report climate change-related information in a standardized way’.
Climate change was a prominent topic at this year’s Davos forum.
Business leaders in particular pushed for extra debate, and 17 forum
sessions related directly to global warming.
Simon Zadek, chief executive of the think-tank AccountAbility, who
attended the forum, said he had been encouraged by the apparent level
of commitment among the business leaders. However, he added that
company chief executives and chairmen appeared to have taken over the
agenda as their own, and that civil society leaders had been ‘excluded
from the debate’. He said: ‘Civil society participation was definitely
reduced this year, [with] reduced visibility in key panels and
discussion groups.’
Zadek applauded what he called the ‘we can solve this’ mentality of
business on climate change but said corporate heads should not believe
they can solve the problem without the assistance of other parts of
society.
Some business leaders also warned that companies must avoid focusing on
climate change at the expense of other social and environmental issues
that could be more material to their business. Neville Isdell, chief
executive of Coca-Cola, told delegates that companies must concentrate
on what is integral to their business, such as the availability of
clean water in Coca-Cola’s case, as well as considering climate change.
William Roedy, president of MTV Networks and chairman of the UN Global
Media Aids Initiative, said Davos had taken business attention on
climate change ‘to the next level’ but warned that other issues with
huge impacts on society, such as the spread of HIV/Aids, were already
being forgotten as corporate attention shifted.
Vehicle
manufacturer Land Rover has created a board to oversee its carbon
dioxide offset programme. Sir Crispin Tickell, a former government
adviser on the environment, and Sally Uren, business programme director
at Forum for the Future, have been appointed to the board. The company
will offset carbon dioxide emissions from its manufacturing plants, and
at point of sale will offer customers the option of offsetting
emissions arising from vehicle use.
