EFE – Only 20% of companies listed on the stock markets have launched plans against climate change, said today in Mexico the executive director of the UN corporate responsibility program, Global Compact (Global Compact), Georg Kell.
However, he pointed out that this trend "is changing very fast" so he expects this figure to increase at a rate of 10% per year.
Kell made the remarks at a press conference held in the Mexican capital during the Global Summit on Business and environment (B4E), which closes tomorrow.
He said that after the fiasco of the last Climate Summit (COP15), held at the end of 2009 in Copenhagen, "everyone now accepts a paradigm shift in which we must rebuild trust for a North-South, East-West transformation."
Kell praised the work to "restore confidence" that Mexico has done towards COP16, which will be held from November 29 to December 10 in the Mexican city of Cancun.
As an example, he cited the approaches that entrepreneurs will take to this event that had no place last year in Denmark.
During his speech, he presented the first results of the "Low carbon leaders" initiative, launched four months ago in New York, which aims to get companies around the world to share solutions against climate change.
This plan, in which "more than six hundred corporations" as well as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) participate so far, grows at a rate of one hundred companies per month, he added.
Some of them go through issues such as changing paper printing habits in offices or improving incandescent lighting systems, which currently consume 19% of global electricity production.
These could be improved with the use of fluorescent lamps, which would allow an overall saving of 630 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, which would avoid an expense of US $ 120 per ton of carbon emitted.
For his part, the director of WWF, Denis Pamlin, was optimistic about COP16 and asked that meetings such as the one held today by the private sector accept to look at companies not as carbon generators, but as providers of solutions to improve people's lives.
Pamlin hoped that COP16 will be "a watershed" that represents the first step for companies to be seen as part of the solution to global climate change.
Related Posts:
- Voice of the Reader – Help us beat the Guinness Climate Change Record
- Ecological Forum "Climate change and the actions that companies and organizations must take"
- Crusade against climate change
- China takes action against climate change
- Barack Obama against climate change
Authors: DForce
